Lewis Hamilton has revealed Ferrari held a "huge discussion" to reflect on a strategic error at the Bahrain Grand Prix that he says "wasn't good enough". Ferrari fitted both Hamilton and his team-mate Charles Leclerc with slick dry tyres at last weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix, which was being hosted in Malaysia and started on a wet track that the Italian squad anticipated would quickly dry out once the race began. The decision was proven wrong as Hamilton fell from his starting position of second to almost the back of the field in the opening stages, with the 14 of 22 drivers that started on the intermediate tyre gaining a huge advantage.
Hamilton ultimately produced a stunning fightback to finish on the podium in third, but having fallen 106 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli, reiterated his desire to see improvement from his team ahead of this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "It wasn't good enough and we've had a huge discussion about it," Hamilton told Sky Sports F1. "And we're going to try and work on how we can come to a better conclusion more consistently in the future." Before revealing those talks, Hamilton had defended Ferrari from what he feels is disproportionate criticism the team receive compared to their F1 rivals.
McLaren also started the race in Sepang on dry tyres and suffered the same fate as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri slid towards the back of the pack. "We do for some reason as a team get far more flack than anybody else," the seven-time world champion said. "McLaren made the same decision and no one even said anything about it.
"You know, they made some excuse of some sort. McLaren made the same mistake and the same call." Hamilton also offered a specific defence of Ferrari's strategists, insisting they alone were not responsible for the starting tyre choice. He added: "It was ultimately a mistake but it's not the strategists.
I think, unfortunately, my strategy team gets the brunt of the (criticism for the) call. "But in actual fact, the call didn't come from the strategist. The call comes from collectively, us working together.
"(Team principal) Fred (Vasseur), (head of track engineering) Matteo (Togninalli), myself, my engineer, we make the decision together. And we discuss it and we put our input, we put all our ideas and information into the pot, whether that's good or not… "I went into the pit lane, I'm like, 'it's wet'. I go to the pit wall, I'm like, 'it's wet'.
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