Lewis Hamilton may have “lost trust” in the Ferrari pit wall following a strategic blunder at the Singapore Grand Prix, according to Sky Sports F1 pundit Naomi Schiff.
Seven-time world champion Hamilton dropped from third to sixth after he controversially ignored a call from Ferrari to follow team-mate Charles Leclerc into the pits during a virtual safety car period.
Immediately after the race, Hamilton apologised to his Ferrari team for his costly decision to override its strategy call and admitted his error was “a painful lesson”.
Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur revealed Hamilton had deliberately ignored what he described as being a “crystal clear” instruction to pit under the VSC.
Hamilton dropped from third to sixth in Singapore
Schiff argued that the failure suggests Hamilton has lost faith in Ferrari.
“I’m not that surprised, I think they’ve sorted of lost trust with each other on making the right decisions in certain circumstances,” Schiff said during Sky Sports F1’s post-race coverage in Singapore.
“Do you blame Lewis today? Yes maybe he made the wrong call. But do you blame the team last week? Yes, they made the wrong call then. So I understand why Lewis is challenging them because he’s not always confident that they are going to make the right decision.
“Maybe he just desperately wanted to get ahead of his team-mate and get that track position element, which on a track like this, can sometimes make the difference.”
But 2009 world champion and fellow Sky Sports F1 pundit Jenson Button saw things differently.
Lewis Hamilton had a race to forget in Singapore
“I don’t know, I disagree. I just think he wanted to make his call on the race and he thought it was the right one,” Button said.
“He didn’t want to be sat behind his team-mate for the rest of the race, basically. He wanted to give it a go and he knew his pace was there when he was on the soft tyre.
“I really respect him for apologising at the end of the race, straight after the race. It’s the best way to do it to move on.”
Schiff responded: “But let’s not forget when they split the strategy and Lewis went in quite early on his mediums, had a fresher set of softs and Leclerc came out in front of him and Lewis didn’t get to maximise that part of his stint because Charles was slowing him down there.
“So I do think that there is a little bit of having to take control in some cases from Lewis’ side, because he doesn’t think he’s going to get the best out of them.”
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