Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc made contact on the first lap of the Italian Grand Prix before the Brit ran onto the gravel and lost several positions; Hamilton fell 76 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli after the Mercedes driver came from 19th on the grid to win at Monza Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Lewis Hamilton has accused Ferrari of having “no rules” after a clash with his team-mate Charles Leclerc during the Italian Grand Prix. Hamilton launched an aggressive move up the inside of his team-mate at the first corner, but was then forced off onto the gravel himself on the exit of the chicane as Leclerc held onto the inside line. Hamilton dropped from his starting position of fourth to 10th, and was left playing catch-up for the rest of the race, as he eventually finished sixth. Leclerc held onto third after the incident, which featured contact between the pair, but then crashed out of the race on the second lap, leaving Ferrari to suffer a dismal afternoon at their home race.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player “I think it comes down to rules of engagement,” said Hamilton, who joined Ferrari from Mercedes in 2025. “When I was at Mercedes, we had written rules of engagement. “We never really, really had it too bad. There was a moment between me and Nico [Rosberg] a couple of times, but more often not, it was good.
“Here, there are no rules. We need to address that.” Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Championship leader Kimi Antonelli claimed a stunning victory from 19th at the grid to extend his advantage over Hamilton to 76 points, while the Ferrari driver also fell 10 points behind George Russell as the Brit completed a Mercedes one-two. It had been a topic of discussion in the media before the race as to whether Ferrari should prioritise Hamilton over Leclerc given his advantage in the standings, which was extended to 36 points by Sunday’s result. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Asked by Sky Sports F1 after the race whether he should have priority over Leclerc, Hamilton replied: “We are too far past that already.
It’s too late for that now. “I lost a lot of points today to those guys. “We will do our best to keep pushing the rest of the season but they are out now, out ahead of us.” Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur insisted that it was too early in the season for the team to prioritise one of their drivers. Vasseur justified his position by using the example of McLaren’s experience last year, when Oscar Piastri led Lando Norris in the standings before being hauled in by both his team-mate and Max Verstappen by the end of the season.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player “For sure, the outcome of the first corners is not good for the team,” Vasseur said. “Now, to see if we have a team order or whatever, I think that the good comparison that I made was that last year, Piastri was leading McLaren at this stage of the season and if McLaren put everything on Piastri, Max Verstappen would have been champion. “For sure, at one stage you have to take a decision but I think it was too early to take a decision before Monza. Now we have time to discuss with the guys.” Leclerc admitted that he and Hamilton had gone “too far” in their early battle, but questioned who was “forcing” a narrative playing the team-mates off against each other.
The Monegasque referred to the previous race in Zandvoort when Hamilton had been left frustrated by being held up by Leclerc during the race when the pair were on different strategies. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player “I don’t really know who is forcing that narrative that we are one against the other,” Leclerc said. “I mean, honestly, Zandvoort, there was way too many talks already. “Here, it’s true though that we went too far.
I think Lewis in Turn 1, then Turn 2, I tried to do the tightest corner possible, but that was just not enough – and doing it here is not good.” Hamilton was also once more left frustrated by his team’s strategic decisions, with the 41-year-old questioning both the choice of tyre compound for him after the early red flag, and a later decision not to pit him under a virtual safety car. “It’s one of the harder ones to swallow today,” he told Sky Sports F1. “I was definitely hoping for more. “I gave it absolutely everything.
We just didn’t have the speed on the straights and we were mostly a sitting duck to the guys around me. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player “We will look internally and try and figure out what we could have done better. I felt we should have been on the hard tyre [on the restart] but we also would have had to overtake people, because we were further back than we were supposed to be. “I thought they were going to stop us [under the VSC] but they didn’t stop us, so I ran out of tyres.” Vasseur said that Ferrari’s difficultly overtaking due to a lack of straight-line speed meant they would have struggled to make an extra stop work in the way that Antonelli and Verstappen, who finished third, were able to.
“We were 10 seconds behind Max before the VSC and we finished 10 seconds behind,” Vasseur told Sky Sports F1. “If you do this [pit], you have to overtake and overtaking is not our favourite topic. It would have been more difficult.” Formula 1 heads straight to Madrid for the Spanish Grand Prix at the new Madring circuit, with every session live from this Friday on Sky Sports F1.
