Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc didn’t let their Monza collision fester. The Ferrari teammates sat down face to face after their first-lap battle at the Italian Grand Prix “went too far,” clearing the air before arriving in Madrid for the Spanish Grand Prix.
The incident itself cost both drivers dearly. Hamilton was attempting to pass Leclerc for third on the opening lap when Leclerc ran him wide exiting Turn 2, dropping Hamilton five places. Leclerc held third briefly before losing further ground and crashing out the following lap.
No formal rules have been introduced for this weekend, but Hamilton confirmed the conversation itself did the job. “We sat face to face, just him and I, and talked about it and we were just both open and honest. We squashed it and we can move on,” he told media Thursday in Madrid. He credited Leclerc’s maturity and called the relationship a healthy one built over time, adding that closeness in pace between the two will likely produce similar moments again.
Leclerc Takes Blame, Hamilton Presses On
Leclerc, speaking separately, took the blame outright. “I obviously know I went too far in Turn 2 and I said it to Lewis,” he said, though he downplayed the need for a formal rulebook going forward. “It’s kind of clear that we never want to see a car of the same team in the grass.” He stressed the incident hadn’t damaged their relationship. “The only thing I can say is that it definitely did not affect the good relationship that we have and it will not affect anything going forward. And that is the most important for me really.”
Hamilton’s push for something resembling Mercedes’ old rules of engagement, put in place after his collisions with Nico Rosberg between 2014 and 2016, isn’t going away, but he’s framing it as a process. “It’s not something we can just change into this weekend,” he said. “There’s a huge amount of moving parts… we just take it one step at a time.”
Leclerc, asked separately about Hamilton’s earlier move at Turn 1, declined to relitigate it. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, wary of the exchange being framed as ongoing tension. “We fully agree with both of our views in hindsight… but surely it’s not a situation that we want to find ourselves in again.”
The Ferrari teammates will be back on the track this weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix to be raced at the IFEMA MADRID Circuit.
