Lewis Hamilton was chosen by Ferrari to replace Carlos Sainz at the end of this year before the season started, but the Spaniard is in excellent form while the Briton is having trouble with Mercedes.
Following yet another impressive performance from Carlos Sainz, Frederic Vasseur angrily snapped at a reporter regarding a question regarding Lewis Hamilton.
After the Italians decided to replace Sainz with the seven-time champion, Sainz will depart Ferrari at the end of the current season. In response, the Spaniard has had his best start to an F1 season, finishing on the podium twice and winning both of the three races in which he has competed.
Hamilton, on the other hand, has struggled with form in yet another miserable Mercedes. His best finish to date was seventh in the season-opening race in Bahrain; in the three races that followed, he only picked up four more points.
Two of those came on Sunday at the Japanese Grand Prix, where he placed ninth. Only the dominant Red Bulls separated Sainz in third place, so it was inevitable that manager Vasseur would be questioned once more regarding the decision to let the 29-year-old go.
But it’s obvious that he’s sick of talking about it. Before the reporter could finish asking his question, the Frenchman interrupted to defend Hamilton, his future driver, and dispel any more comparisons to his departing star.
Vasseur grimaced and said, “We get the same question every weekend. Please copy and paste my response from last week. The next one.”
When it came to queries regarding Ferrari’s apparent advantage over Mercedes at the moment, it appeared that Hamilton shared the same sentiments as his future boss.
When asked how his race had gone, Hamilton gave a direct response, saying, “It was okay.” He objected to the following query, which came from the same reporter: “Are you currently a little bit envious of the Ferraris? since they move more quickly?”
Hamilton’s retort was: “Do you have any better questions?” The reporter apologised but before anyone else could ask, the Mercedes racer walked away and his press officer simply said: “Thank you.”
He did speak in the TV pen, though, and made his thoughts on his newest Mercedes machine clear. He said: “The car is never what I hoped it would be. It’s never what we hoped it would be… The hard tyre was pretty bad and the medium was much better. In hindsight, we should have kept two medium tyres, but in general the car was pretty bad today.”
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