Spineless Ferrari risks open war amid Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc feud

Ferrari is slowly but surely discovering the consequences of ignoring a problem and hoping it will go away by itself. 

The shenanigans between Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc in their opening-lap duel at the Mexico City Grand Prix threw away any chance of a Ferrari victory. Instead of what could, and perhaps should have been a one-two, Ferrari’s warring drivers handed the win on a plate to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. 

It was an own goal of epic proportions and the latest example of Ferrari’s unenviable yet remarkable tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

With Hamilton airing his frustrations publicly and taking the row off-track by calling out Leclerc and questioning his “do or die” mentality, Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur risks losing total control if no action is taken. 

"We could have easily had a one-two today. We had the pace to do so,” seven-time world champion Hamilton said after the race. 

"We're going into Turn 4 first and second. If we just held position, I think anything can happen in the race. But when your team-mate works against you and then you lose positions like that, it's definitely tough.

"So we'll just talk about it offline and it's not really worth saying too much more. We don't have rules of engagement. And whether or not that would change anything from Charles' side, I don't know. We've just got to figure it out. But something needs to change for sure.”

Had Leclerc swallowed his pride and gone more conservative to help preserve Ferrari’s early one-two around a track where overtaking is notoriously difficult, the Scuderia might have ended the day celebrating its best result of the season, rather than licking its wounds. 

Instead, Leclerc’s personal ambition got the better of him. The 28-year-old Monegasque is not demonstrating qualities of being a team player. Leclerc seems to race no one harder than his team-mate and he has been allowed to do so by Ferrari. 

But this is a wider issue that goes beyond which driver was in the right and which was in the wrong. It is a problem Ferrari has brought upon itself by seemingly not being able to manage them and set out clear rules of engagement. 

This was an entirely predictable scenario that Ferrari staggeringly lacked the foresight to see coming, and has enabled it to happen because there is no control.

The warning shots were there at Zandvoort, where Leclerc ignored a team order to move aside for Hamilton, and at Ferrari’s home race at Monza, where Leclerc pushed Hamilton off track at the first corner. 

In Singapore, Hamilton’s growing discontent and apparent mistrust of Ferrari was laid bare when he overrided the pit wall and chose his own strategy, which ultimately backfired. This came after Hamilton felt he should have been let past Leclerc when they were on different tyres, but Ferrari refused to take action. 

On each of these occasions, Ferrari failed to act and buried its head in the sand. 

Tensions between Hamilton and Leclerc have been bubbling beneath the surface for some time. Mexico marked the most serious flashpoint of the Hamilton-Leclerc partnership so far, and things could go nuclear fast. 

After all, this was just over a race victory. Imagine if Ferrari found itself in title contention with two quarrelling drivers and no rules to manage them?

This represents arguably the biggest test of Vasseur’s premiership at Ferrari and the next steps the team takes will be crucial in how the team moves forward. 

2016 world champion Nico Rosberg, who is perhaps the most qualified person when it comes to the dynamics of fierce intra-team battles with Hamilton, issued a warning shot that Vasseur and Ferrari would do well to take onboard. 

“Really Fred Vasseur, he needs to start to act,” Rosberg told Sky Sports F1. “As Lewis said before the race, there was no discussion. Like clear racing guidelines between the two. It needs to happen, otherwise it’s going to keep going like this. 

“It gets really bad when the drivers disregard whatever has been discussed and just take it in their own hands and sort it out on track and barge the other guy out the way. That can very quickly happen and it’s already kind of happening.” 

An increasingly alienated and angry Hamilton made it clear he wants Vasseur and Ferrari to take a stronger stance. 

"Fred's doing his best. Fred came and spoke to me before the race and I think he was nervous and I think he just wanted us, of course, he wants these two drivers to do well,” the 41-year-old Briton said. 

"From my side, if I'm coming from behind and I'm taking all the risk and it ends up we lose as a team, then I think I'd have some answering to do, because it impacts a lot of people. But the other way around, I'm in the lead and it was just unnecessary.

"The core thing to remember, which maybe that comes with age, but every decision you make in the car impacts all the people that work in the background for the whole team.

"So working as a team, part of our job and part of our contract is we have to work as a team, which we could have easily done today. So it's a shame to see us lose as we did. It will continue unless action is taken.”

Issues rarely fix themselves and this is a problem that will not magically disappear. Ferrari must now front up to that reality before things spiral out of control. 

Vasseur needs to quickly diffuse the situation and lay down some ground rules, otherwise there will be severe question marks over his ability to manage two elite drivers. 

Ferrari wanted this superteam line-up. Now it needs to manage the escalation between its drivers, otherwise it can forget about winning titles any time soon.