Lewis Hamilton had a harsh criticism about the rules for disputes between teammates, removed by Ferrari from the audio sent to the press after the Formula 1 Italian GP. The edit occurred after the British driver advocated for the creation of written guidelines to avoid new conflicts within the team.
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The statement had been fully recorded during an interview of about eight minutes given by Hamilton in the area reserved for drivers after the race in Monza. Journalists present at the location had already heard and recorded the statements before Ferrari distributed an edited version of the file.
Hamilton stated that the team should establish clear rules for internal disputes: “I think it comes down to dispute rules. When I was at Mercedes, we had written dispute rules, so it never really got that bad. Here there are no rules, and I think that’s something we need to try to fix,” he said.
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The statements were published by several media outlets a few minutes after Hamilton spoke. Therefore, the removal of the excerpt from the file distributed by Ferrari did not prevent the criticism from circulating, as the journalists present had followed the speech directly.
This situation increases attention on how Ferrari manages its two drivers, after the incident between Hamilton and Charles Leclerc at the start of the Italian GP. Leclerc retired after a heavy crash at the end of the second lap, while Hamilton finished sixth and is 76 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli, with the team now heading to Madrid surrounded by questions about the handling of disputes within the team and also about the treatment given to the statements of its drivers.
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