Between the Red Fortress and Leaked Laments: A Crisis Unfolds at Ferrari

The 2025 Formula 1 season has delivered a script filled with drama and unanswered questions at one of history’s most storied teams—Scuderia Ferrari. The Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku, in particular, became a flashpoint, exposing deep cracks within the team, not just in terms of on-track performance but also regarding the tense relationship between its two star drivers, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. A previously unaired, leaked radio recording has pulled back the curtain, revealing Leclerc’s bitter frustration with Hamilton, sending shockwaves through the F1 community and leaving the Tifosi deeply concerned.

The Azerbaijan Grand Prix was supposed to be an opportunity for Ferrari to rebound after a string of lackluster results. Instead, it devolved into a disaster, with the team finishing a lowly eighth and ninth, allowing Mercedes to leapfrog them in the constructors’ standings. For Charles Leclerc, who boasted an impressive record of five consecutive pole positions in Baku, this year’s race was a crushing disappointment. A costly crash in Q3 forced him to start from 10th on the grid. Although Leclerc made impressive overtakes in the early stages, dispatching Lando Norris and Isaac Hajar, Ferrari’s flawed strategy quickly derailed his race.

The High-Stakes Drama of the Final Lap

The peak of the frustration arrived in the closing laps. With Lewis Hamilton carrying the team’s last hope of salvaging the race, Leclerc received a team order to let the Briton pass to attack the cars ahead. The plan was for Hamilton to make his move, and if unsuccessful, he would return the position to Leclerc. However, when Hamilton’s bid fizzled out, he ignored the calls to swap back. The checkered flag waved, and Leclerc remained behind, forced to settle for a lesser result.

Publicly, Leclerc appeared composed, but the newly leaked radio transmission painted a starkly different picture of the reality behind his calm exterior. His irritation with Hamilton was “crystal clear.” “I don’t really care, it’s for an eighth place, so it’s okay,” Leclerc told his engineer. “He can enjoy that P8. It’s just stupid because it’s not fair, but again, I don’t mind. Honestly, P8 or P9 means a difficult weekend.”

These words, while seemingly dismissive, carried a heavy undercurrent of resentment, revealing the deep disappointment of a driver who lives to win. Leclerc has been the backbone of Ferrari’s 2025 campaign, delivering all five of the team’s podium finishes so far. He has also decisively won the qualifying battle against the seven-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton. This only highlights the situation further, as Hamilton has only finished ahead of Leclerc on three occasions this season—a statistic that underscores who is truly leading the charge in red.

A Miscalculation or a Deliberate Act?

On Hamilton’s side, footage circulating on social media shows he was explicitly instructed: “Charles 1.5 behind you, it’s the last lap, let him by.” As Hamilton approached the finish line, he briefly lifted off the throttle but not enough, crossing the line just ahead of Leclerc. In reality, Ferrari’s timing may have doomed the swap, with the order coming too late for Hamilton to slow sufficiently and allow his teammate through. According to the circulating footage, the call to “let him by” came only meters before the checkered flag, leaving no real chance for Leclerc to reclaim the place.

Hamilton’s “refusal” to give the place back meant he finished ahead of Leclerc for only the third time this season, all while staring down the prospect of his worst-ever defeat to a teammate. After the race, Sky Sports pit lane reporter Ted Kravitz shed more light on the incident, explaining that Hamilton had, in fact, attempted to comply with Ferrari’s instructions but ultimately misjudged the timing of the swap, leaving Leclerc stranded behind. “Leclerc was told to let Lewis Hamilton pass,” Kravitz reported. “He was then offered the place back but didn’t get it because they messed up the orchestration.”

However, Kravitz also added that Leclerc didn’t seem overly concerned about finishing behind Hamilton, suggesting the Monegasque driver was less ruffled by the situation than the radio chatter implied. “They both said, ‘We aren’t really bothered about giving the places back, so it was his [Hamilton’s] to keep’,” Kravitz relayed. This suggests that, despite the initial burst of frustration, the incident may not have been as severe as the leaked audio first made it seem, or at least that both drivers tried to put it aside for the good of the team, though the disappointment clearly lingered.

Ferrari’s Bleak Future and Hamilton’s Championship Dream

Moving on from the incident, Lewis Hamilton painted a rather bleak outlook for Ferrari’s 2025 campaign following another tough outing in Baku. With the Scuderia already shifting much of its focus toward the 2026 regulations, the seven-time champion admitted it will be especially difficult to keep pace with rivals like McLaren and Red Bull, teams that are still rolling out fresh upgrades.

Optimism had briefly flickered when Ferrari topped the practice sessions in Azerbaijan, sparking whispers of a potential resurgence. That hope quickly evaporated in qualifying, with Hamilton eliminated in Q2 and Leclerc crashing early in Q3. Race day brought only more frustration: an eighth and ninth-place finish, capped off by Hamilton’s failed attempt to hand a position back to Leclerc in the final laps. Yet, such has been Ferrari’s season that Baku was framed not as a disaster but as a middling disappointment.

Speaking afterward, Hamilton’s tone carried a familiar frustration over the team’s lack of pace. Asked whether Ferrari could mount a challenge against the front-runners, he was blunt: “McLaren’s been ahead all year, we haven’t made any steps to improve, so we’re a good couple of steps behind. Red Bull took an upgraded floor, I think, in the last race, so they’ve now picked up their pace and you have to expect they’re probably going to win more races.”

Hamilton made it clear that upgrades were front and center in his thoughts when pressed about Ferrari’s chances in the races ahead. “If we qualify better, we’re going to be in a much better position to race,” he pointed out. “I mean, I would give anything for an upgrade, but obviously we don’t have that. We have to focus on next year’s car, so we just have to do better in optimizing and execution.”

Ferrari stands out as the only top-four team yet to claim a Grand Prix victory in 2025, despite Hamilton grabbing a sprint win in China back in March, just his second outing in red. That result briefly raised expectations, but 17 races into the season, he’s still waiting for his first podium in Ferrari colors.

Like several rivals, the Scuderia has already shifted its focus toward 2026, betting heavily on the sweeping regulation changes—new power units, fresh aero rules, and a blank-slate car design—as their best chance to finally end a title drought stretching back to 2008.

For Hamilton, time is running short. He turns 41 in January, and the window to secure that record-breaking eighth world championship is closing fast. If Ferrari can’t deliver a front-running car by 2026, the fairy-tale dream he held as a boy of winning in red may slip away forever.

Faith Remains, But Pressure Mounts

Still, belief in Hamilton’s ability hasn’t waned everywhere. Among those backing him is Alpine boss Flavio Briatore, who has tipped the Brit to be back fighting at the sharp end of the grid as soon as next season. “Sooner or later he will solve the problems. He is a very good person, but F1 is very complicated today with seven cars within 2/10ths of a second,” Briatore commented. “This year, the only truly competitive team is McLaren. Next year everything will change, and we will be fighting for the podium too. You will see, with the new cars, Hamilton will be back in the fight for victory. He is always great.”

Briatore is a notable outlier, an influential Italian voice in Formula 1 with no direct ties to Ferrari. When pressed in the same interview about whether he could ever see himself working for the Scuderia, he dismissed the idea outright. “I already have my own problems,” he said. “I have only been close to Ferrari in the garage. No one ever asked me to go to Ferrari, but I know that when I was at Benetton, Ferrari had to take 12 or 13 people away from me to win, starting with Michael Schumacher. Luca di Montezemolo was and is a great manager with extraordinary leadership, but even he had to wait five years to win. It was never easy.”

Leclerc’s frustration, Hamilton’s struggles, and Ferrari’s fading hopes paint a clear picture: 2025 is slipping away, with all eyes fixed on 2026. The question remains: can Ferrari and Hamilton rewrite their story? Or will this be another sad chapter in the glorious but challenging history of the Italian team? Time will tell, but the pressure is mounting on everyone in Maranello.