David Coulthard does not believe that Ferrari has room to designate Lewis Hamilton or Charles Leclerc as the team’s number one driver. For the former Formula 1 driver, the situation requires the team to know how to manage the duo, made up of two top-level names.
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“They [Ferrari] have no choice. They hired two of the best drivers in the world. You then manage them as best you can.”
Hamilton joined Ferrari last year, after leaving Mercedes, and began sharing the team with Leclerc. The Monegasque has been in Maranello since 2019, after spending several years in Ferrari’s young driver program.
The rivalry between the two gained more attention earlier this month, during the Italian GP. On the first lap, Leclerc seemed to push Hamilton off the track, sending the Briton into the gravel. The incident sparked discussion about the possibility of Ferrari establishing a hierarchy among the drivers to try to reduce the advantage of Mercedes and Kimi Antonelli.
For Coulthard, that would not make sense given the duo Ferrari has in hand: “I don’t think that’s an option for them,” Coulthard said on the Up to Speed podcast. “You hire Lewis Hamilton, and you have Charles Leclerc, who has been there for several years, is incredibly fast and a kind of poster boy for racing drivers. Good-looking, has a family, a baby on the way, a dog in the paddock… my opinion is that all of this is a bit much, frankly.”
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“It’s not a weekend picnic, is it? It’s a Grand Prix, it’s serious business. It’s dangerous business, but that’s probably me being from an older generation.”
After the race in Monza, Hamilton stated that the idea of the two working together to reduce Mercedes’ advantage had already come too late. Despite the incident, both drivers downplayed the event, which represented the most tense moment between them so far at Ferrari.
Coulthard also believes the team probably already has rules to deal with situations like this. When asked about the possibility of Ferrari creating engagement rules, he replied: “I suspect they already do. There will be somewhere in the contract something that says the driver must follow fair and reasonable instructions from a senior team member. That’s a fairly generic clause that’s in all contracts, because otherwise you could hire a driver and he could become undisciplined. You couldn’t fire him because you don’t have a clause that says: ‘look, you really aren’t behaving.’”
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