Ferrari address Lewis Hamilton’s “I don’t want to stop” plea

Stand-in Ferrari boss Jerome d’Ambrosio has addressed Lewis Hamilton’s apparent strategy disagreement at the Austrian Grand Prix.

Hamilton matched his best result yet for Ferrari by finishing fourth in his upgraded SF-25 behind teammate Charles Leclerc in Sunday’s 70-lap race at the Red Bull Ring.

But the seven-time world champion seemed to be unhappy with the timing of his second pit stop, with Hamilton reporting that his tyres were okay. He requested to “extend” his stint but when asked to box by race engineer Riccardo Adami, he responded: "I don’t want to stop.”

Speaking after the race, Hamilton downplayed the radio exchange between himself and Ferrari’s pit wall.

“I didn’t know how many laps there were, to be honest, at the time,” he explained. “The pace wasn’t looking great, but I felt like I could keep going.”

Ferrari explain strategic thinking

D’Ambrosio, standing in for Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur - who returned home from Austria for “personal reasons” - explained the Italian outfit were simply following the optimal strategy.

“I think it was more a question of a matter of setting, so staying a few more laps. In the end, it’s nothing out of the norm,” the Belgian said. “What we try to do as a team was to, and Austria is very much like that, you try to do your optimal strategy. You try to optimise your race time.

“That’s what we did with both drivers. To be honest there was no incentive in doing anything different, because the McLarens were clearly far ahead and George quite far behind. So we were in between them with both cars.

“We just did a standard optimal strategy, and that was the most straightforward thing to do. From a driver’s perspective, you question always, is it the best? Can we do something else?

“They are racers, they’re Formula 1 drivers, that’s what they should do, and that’s what they do. But in the end, you look at the numbers and that’s what made sense.”

D’Ambrosio went on to detail how Lewis Hamilton has been helping to push Ferrari to improve.

“Well, I’ve been in the team now since October and Lewis has been in the team since January so we’ve had a lot of discussions, how can one improve?” d’Ambrosio explained.

“And this is what we do. We wake up, we go to the factory and say, how can I improve? How can we be better in every area of the team, from engineering to execution on the track, to what feedback we can give to the drivers. How can we help one another as a team to move forward? And that’s true in every single area of the team.

“So when he came with Lewis, we for sure we discussed all of that, and we discussed in the same way with Charles, who also has extensive experience and we discussed as a team.

“We have regular meetings to discuss these things on how to best move forward.”