‘Spark or slap?’ - Ferrari president’s scathing comments questioned

The reasoning behind Ferrari president John Elkann’s criticism of his drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc has been questioned.

Following a miserable Sao Paulo Grand Prix in which Ferrari suffered a double DNF, Elkann said Hamilton and Leclerc need to “talk less” in a surprising swipe at his drivers.

After the race, seven-time world champion Hamilton described his maiden season with Ferrari as a “nightmare”, before he and teammate Leclerc later issued defiant social media posts in the wake of Elkann’s eye-opening comments.

“I think it was more can we just focus please on not dropping down to fourth in the constructors’ and getting back into second or even third,” Sky Sports F1 pitlane reporter Ted Kravitz told The F1 Show when asked by host Simon Lazenby if Elkann's comments were 'a spark or slap'. 

“It’s a mark of how Ferrari are now judging their season, on where they finish in the constructors’. Second would be a success. They can rely on that. It’s cold hard points and data and they can say ‘we’ve had the second-quickest car, it’s not all so bad, we didn’t win a race but it’s all okay’.

“But let’s not forget that the people that got Ferrari to second in the constructors’ championship were Charles and Lewis, because they were just plugging in the points.

“And let’s not forget that this car has a fundamental flaw in it that the Belgium upgrade was not able to correct in terms of the Belgium plank and not being able to run the car low and not being able to find a fix around that.

“So it’s the drivers who have been getting the points in and for Elkann to publicly single them out… The drivers have got broad shoulders, Lewis did that message on social media, did you notice Charles Leclerc put one out as well?

“They were putting out a united front saying ‘look, we are only thinking of the best of the team’. That’s clearly what the drivers are thinking. It’s fine for Elkann to say what he wants, he’s the president of the team, but to say the drivers should think less about themselves and more about the team, the drivers are thinking about the team, of course they are.

“Maybe they caught Elkann at a point where he’d seen a double DNF, it’s the worst for a team, nobody likes to see a double DNF, that’s obvious. Whether Elkann will come to think whether his comments were a bit strong, I don’t know.

“What’s Lewis going to say? And what’s Charles going to say? ‘Oh I’m fine with it’. No one will buy that. You can’t deny what’s happening.”

Kravitz later suggested that “it was the nightmare thing that really got Elkann”.

Are Ferrari’s drivers being selfish?

Follow Sky Sports F1 analyst and former team strategist Bernie Collins admitted that drivers are selfish, though she stressed both Hamilton and Leclerc are ultimately pushing in the same direction to improve Ferrari.

“F1 drivers are fundamentally selfish people, that’s how they score points. They are out for them, they are out to get the drivers’ championship. That’s why we talk about it so much when McLaren try to get them to do the team thing,” Collins said.

“But both drivers’ intention was not to DNF on Sunday. On Sunday they were aligned, maximum points for either is what they were after.

“There used to be a saying when you were in the garage - ‘the beatings will continue until morale improves’. That’s a bit the situation, isn’t it? And what has that gained Ferrari? Not a lot.

“Ferrari have not won a championship in 19 years or something and neither Charles or Lewis have been there that long. There’s something else fundamentally when you look at the investment Ferrari are putting in and the result they are getting out in terms of championship points.

“The drivers fundamentally want to score as much points as they can, they both want to win. Lewis doesn’t want to be the Ferrari driver who’s not had a podium for the longest first season with Ferrari, he doesn’t want to have a winless first year. None of those things they want to happen.

“I can’t believe they are at such loggerheads within the team that they are not pushing the team or the engineering forward. Hopefully he was got at the wrong moment and didn’t quite choose his words well. It was a horrendous weekend for Ferrari.”