Hamilton 'not trusting' Ferrari pit wall after Singapore strategy blunder, Sky pundits warn

Lewis Hamilton's refusal to heed Ferrari's call to pit under a Virtual Safety Car at the Singapore Grand Prix has laid bare a fraying relationship between the seven-time world champion and the Scuderia's pit wall, with Sky Sports F1 pundits warning the team must urgently rebuild trust over strategy decisions.

'A painful lesson' in Singapore

Hamilton finished sixth in last Sunday's race in Singapore after overriding the team's instruction to stop under a lap-39 Virtual Safety Car — a call that cost him what the team estimated would have been a podium finish of third. On team radio after struggling on worn tyres, Hamilton apologised for “my call” around the strategy, a position he subsequently reiterated on social media when he admitted he had learned a “painful lesson” by choosing “a strategy that ultimately didn't deliver.”

Prior reporting from 11 October had already detailed Hamilton's apology to Ferrari, with team principal Frederic Vasseur stating the ignored call dropped the Briton from third to sixth. The latest analysis, however, goes further in questioning the underlying dynamic between driver and pit wall.

Collins: 'Lewis isn't trusting that Ferrari team'

On the latest edition of The F1 Show podcast, former Aston Martin head of race strategy Bernie Collins was asked whether Singapore was evidence that trust between Hamilton and the Ferrari pit wall had broken down.

“Lewis started on the medium tyre, which is one of the things he actually came out and said he thought in hindsight was the wrong decision, but was his decision,” said Collins. “He decided to go that way strategically at the beginning of the race. He stops earlier than everybody else so instantly when we're watching at home, we're thinking, 'okay, he's probably on a two-stop here' because he's the first of any of the cars really to stop. He puts on that soft tyre. Then they get this perfect opportunity with the virtual safety car to stop again, take another set of soft tyres.”

Collins noted that while viewers at home did not hear a call to box Hamilton, Vasseur later confirmed one had been made — and that Hamilton either missed the entry or ignored it. “Someone of Lewis's stature doesn't forget to do a pit stop,” she said. “So let's say it's a decision to not take the pit entry or the call didn't come in time or whatever. But that was crucial, I think, to the race at that point.”

Collins drew a line to the previous weekend's rain-hit race at Sepang, where Ferrari's decision to start both drivers on slick tyres on a too-wet track dropped them down the order before Hamilton gambled on staying out longer than team-mate Charles Leclerc. “That shows, more globally, that Lewis isn't trusting that Ferrari team,” Collins said. “He's questioning their decisions and in this sort of quick-decision VSC moment, there's not the time to have all the back and forth about what he thinks or why.”

She also pointed to a missed later opportunity: “There was the opportunity later on, I think, even after they missed the VSC, to do a full pit stop and still be able to beat Piastri and they didn't take that either. There were lots of decisions that should have been done differently and they should be having a very difficult conversation between Lewis and his engineers, or the strategy team or Fred, whoever needs to be involved, to say, 'where is the trust? When we make these decisions, what is the protocol for how that decision is taken and why?'”

Give the driver more information, earlier

Collins argued that while drivers should generally defer to the pit wall, which holds the fuller picture, teams can pre-empt friction by feeding information sooner — citing her time with four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel at Aston Martin.

“In my opinion, yes, [drivers] should [defer to the pit wall],” Collins said. “They're the people with the most information. They're the people with the big picture. However, there's another band of thought that says the driver is the most expensive sensor in the car. And I often had situations with Sebastian Vettel, who was very strong strategically, where we ended up starting to give him pit stop information earlier than we would give another driver in order to give him a sort of right to reply.”

She added: “Many teams, lots and lots of teams in the situation that Ferrari were in, five laps before the safety car would have said, 'if there's a safety car now, we will take it and double stack the cars'. And that gives Lewis a chance to say, 'I think that's right, I think that's wrong'. You've a bit of a discussion about it. Yes, you're giving away information to other teams, which people don't want to do, but you're making the right decision for you and that is your P1 goal. So they need to bring the conversation forward if there's going to be a back and forth.”

Chandhok: 'They've got to have some sort of reset'

Fellow Sky F1 pundit and former driver Karun Chandhok believes the Scuderia must overhaul how it handles strategy discussions. “They've got to have some sort of reset,” he said. “Lewis was annoyed with the way Ferrari played that whole race. If you look at it, he started on the medium tyre. Of the top-seven finishers, he was the only one to start on the medium tyre, yet he pitted first. They were clearly unhappy with his pace on the medium.”

Chandhok was also critical of the team's management of the two cars: “They put him out behind Leclerc and then he sat there getting annoyed [at] the fact that he's not getting past Leclerc, and they didn't explain to either driver, that they need a swap. They didn't do a good job in that phase of the race. So then you've got Lewis who's now three seconds behind Charles annoyed that he's not been allowed to get in front. The VSC comes out, Charles boxes and he thinks, 'well, I'm going to have free air. I'm going to go for it.' He's not thinking of the big picture of the race and that's why I think the strategy team needed to say to him, 'Lewis, your tyre...'”

Title race fall-out

The strategic misstep had repercussions beyond Ferrari. As reported on 12 October, Hamilton's failed Singapore gamble inadvertently nudged championship leader Kimi Antonelli closer to a maiden Formula 1 world title, with the lost points proving costly in the standings. With the United States Grand Prix in Austin set for 23-25 October, live on Sky Sports F1, Ferrari's pit-wall tensions are unlikely to escape scrutiny.