Ferrari's Monza disaster lays bare Hamilton–Leclerc divide as home crowd left gutted

Ferrari's home race unravels as Hamilton and Leclerc tensions surface

MONZA, Italy — Ferrari expected the Italian Grand Prix to go differently. Fans decked in the team's iconic red and carrying its flags lined the streets and grandstands, pushing and cheering their team on. These grew louder each time a Ferrari left its garage and entered the pit lane before softening again — a call and response that echoed around the circuit.

A religion in red

It's always been this way. As former Formula 1 commentator Will Buxton once put it: "There are two religions in Italy: There's the Catholic Church and there's Ferrari." Lewis Hamilton reinforced this on Thursday, saying in the Monza pre-event news conference, "To Italians, it's the Pope and Ferrari, and pasta and pizza, and family."

Armed with an engine upgrade on their cars for this event, the Ferrari drivers entered the weekend with hopes of challenging for the win at an iconic race that means so much to their team. Charles Leclerc reckoned the engine would have "more power," although he wasn't sure how this would compare to Ferrari's rivals. Both drivers agreed that strong execution of tactics and driving was needed, with Hamilton pointing out "for us to win this weekend, any weekend, it takes the whole collective to come together. It's not just one thing. Everything has to flow from the beginning."

Engine hopes, execution failures

But when the moment requiring flawless teamwork arrived, it wasn't there — again. A crash for Leclerc and a sixth-place finish for Hamilton, when Mercedes' drivers shot clear and finished 1-2, was all Ferrari could muster when the pressure was turned up. The team left its home race with a harsh spotlight on its lack of decisive teamwork plans, in a year where it has challenged Mercedes for victories — Ferrari is second in the constructors' championship — but not consistently.

The cracks were visible at the previous race in Zandvoort. Ferrari didn't issue team orders to swap its drivers at a critical late moment, where Leclerc was leading Hamilton but the Briton was faster on a different tire strategy. Instead, Ferrari called Leclerc into the pit, an instruction he initially ignored because he wasn't convinced of the strategy's merits. Hamilton expressed frustration over the radio as he lost time behind. The Briton felt it was the difference between a podium finish and the fourth place he ended up with. He toned down his initial radio frustrations in a subsequent Instagram post, where he said these did not convey "the best version of me." "I take responsibility for that, and I'll be better," he added.

Qualifying chaos and the tow problem

The narrative carried into Monza, as Ferrari's teamwork came under the microscope due to its unexpectedly poor qualifying performance. All the teams needed tow tactics — where one car leads another to reduce drag and increase speed with a slipstream given to the chasing car — to get the quickest lap times because of Monza's long straights. Positioning and timing in a line of cars is critical to best nail the tow effect. But Ferrari struggled to get it right, and Hamilton told reporters after qualifying, "the team was solely focused on trying to get an equal tow for Charles's lap."

Because of the team's regular rotation of which driver is sent out first or second at every race — where better track conditions or the need for a tow could mean the driver with priority decides if they want to run ahead or behind their teammate — Leclerc was always towing Hamilton at Monza. Leclerc still needed a tow from somewhere and it had to come from rival cars, which meant the two Ferraris couldn't just choose when to head out, as the Mercedes drivers did across qualifying, with Kimi Antonelli solely focused on helping George Russell due to his engine-change grid penalty which left him starting from 19th. Any delay in positioning Leclerc had a knock-on effect for Hamilton, and he was nearly eliminated in Q2 as a result. Leclerc ended up qualifying ahead of Hamilton, who was third and level on points with Russell in the championship standings — 59 points adrift from leader Antonelli — before Sunday's race. Leclerc was fifth and 87 points down.

Ahead of Monza, some observers were already questioning whether Ferrari should start prioritizing its lead driver to mount a championship challenge. "We're at a point in the year where 59 points is a huge deficit to recover from, especially when Mercedes continue to be the leaders in speed," Hamilton said Saturday. "So we do have to work as a team." He felt the "light at the end of the tunnel" for his title aspirations still existed but even then it was dimming. Come Sunday, that light got even weaker. There were 11 races remaining before Monza, now there are 10 left.

Race-day friction

The Ferrari drivers are allowed to race each other, and did so early in the Italian GP. They had near contact at Turn 1 on the opening lap before coming even closer in Turn 2, so close that Hamilton alleged over the radio that Leclerc "pushed me off," as he was edged into the gravel and lost six places. "We're definitely going to have it on after the race," Hamilton said into his team radio. The stewards opted to take no action on the incident. Leclerc said afterwards he felt they "went too far."

His race then came to an early end as he crashed hard at the Parabolica corner on Lap 2 of 53, causing a red-flag race stoppage. When the race restarted, Hamilton was eighth and faced a challenge to pick his way through the pack. He managed to get to fourth at the end of the first lap post-restart, and he remained in the top-five mix for much of the race, before ending up sixth as the McLaren drivers overcame him later on. Hamilton had mirrored the medium tire strategy deployed by Antonelli and Max Verstappen ahead, but Ferrari didn't take the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) stop that they got and his tires gave up over the rest of the race.

"I was in a fight feeling good. grip felt good, car felt generally decent through the corners, but just in the straight (the other cars were pulling away)," Hamilton said. "We knew they were fast on the straight, but it was really mind-blowing just how quick they were. The Mercedes power, that thing just keeps pulling, pulling, pulling."

"Gutted" — and looking upward for answers

He left Monza feeling "gutted" for Ferrari's fanbase and for those working at its factory. And post-race Hamilton again noted how Ferrari's teamwork execution wasn't handled well — on Saturday or Sunday. "It's tough because I'm giving it everything I can, and sometimes it's just not enough," he continued. "You need all the other stuff to come together."

The big question is what needs to change? Hamilton feels it starts from the top — with team principal Fred Vasseur — and "trickles down" from there. He said he told Ferrari Saturday that the team needs to look into how it can better communicate, because "we continue to travel the same path to get the same result, and we keep getting the same result. We've got to change things because this is not helping us move forward."

It's unlikely that changes can be made overnight, or at least before the race in Madrid this weekend. But after this doubleheader, Hamilton said Ferrari would "look (at) how we can procedurally do things differently so that the same thing can't keep happening." As far as any rules of engagement for the two drivers racing wheel-to-wheel, Vasseur had felt it was too early to prioritize either driver pre-Monza, given how much of the season remained. But during his post-race media session, he said: "We have time to discuss with the guys." Unaware of those remarks as he spoke to reporters, Hamilton did discuss rules of engagement. He said these were written up during his 12 seasons at Mercedes — a contrast to the ambiguity that has defined Ferrari's internal battle.