Ferrari address safety concerns after Lewis Hamilton’s worrying race-long brake issue

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur has revealed that Lewis Hamilton was forced to manage brake issues from the start of the Singapore Grand Prix but denied the situation posed any safety risk.

Hamilton was chasing Kimi Antonelli in the fight for fifth place before suffering a brake issue in the closing laps.

The problem meant Hamilton lost over 40 seconds of race time and came under threat from Fernando Alonso.

Hamilton cut multiple corners on the final lap as he tried to stay ahead of Alonso while battling the brake issue.

After the race, Hamilton was handed a five-second time penalty, dropping him from seventh to eighth.

Speaking to reporters after the race in Singapore, Vasseur insisted Hamilton’s car was still on the “safe side”.

“In terms of safety, yes, because we adapted the pace,” Vasseur said. “It’s not that Lewis was pushing like hell in the last lap, but he was 30 seconds slower.

“In terms of safety, it was on the safe side, but not the target. The target is to be safe, but the target is not to be safe.”

Race-long problem for Ferrari

Ferrari have suffered brake woes for much of the season.

Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have often been told to “lift and coast”.

Singapore was no different, with both drivers ordered to do so from as early as Lap 8.

“It will be difficult to start with the positive,” Vasseur explained. “Yes, we were hitting not from lap one, but from lap two or three.

“And we had to do a lift and coast for the race, but even for them at the end it’s not easy to drive, because you have to adapt your braking point each lap.

“Clearly, when we pushed a couple of laps with Lewis, I think the pace was decent. But you can’t do 95% of the race on the back foot.”

It was another poor weekend for Ferrari, as they were comprehensively outperformed by Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren.

Vasseur feels that without the brake management, Ferrari’s pace “was not bad”.

“We all know that in Singapore, when you are in the middle of the pack, it’s critical for the brakes … but still it was not expected at this point,” he added.

Speaking of Hamilton’s fastest lap on the softs, he said: “No, because we put a set of soft at the end. It’s a fake fastest lap for me, that we are not in the same situation.

“I can say that when he was pushing, the pace was there, and the gap with the cars in front of him was coherent with the delta that you have on the tyres, but nothing more than this.

“It’s also frustrating for us, because we had the feeling that when we did three laps in a row without saving, that the pace was not bad.”