Lewis Hamilton ‘engineering the car’ as Ferrari boss makes Belgian GP quip

Fred Vasseur joked that Lewis Hamilton was “engineering the car” as the Ferrari driver put in an epic recovery drive at the Belgian Grand Prix, gaining 10 places.

Up until Sunday, Hamilton had been having a wretched time at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit where he suffered a double Q1 elimination for the Sprint weekend.

Lewis Hamilton made up 10 places at the Belgian GP

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Down in 16th place in qualifying for the Grand Prix, Ferrari made the call to change Hamilton’s setup and his power unit, forcing a pit lane start.

But with Race Control sending all the drivers back into the pit lane when they red-flagged the race during the formation lap, Hamilton joined the back of the field in 17th place.

After a delay of more than an hour, the race got underway with four laps behind the Safety Car before the conditions were deemed safe enough to go racing.

Hamilton charged through the field, running just outside the top ten when he pitted on lap 12 for a set of medium Pirelli tyres. He was the first driver to gamble on slicks and it paid off as he was up in seventh as the pit stop played out.

He finished the Grand Prix in seventh place having made up 10 positions.

Speaking with the media, including PlanetF1.com, Vasseur was told Hamilton did a good job “regardless of downforce levels” as the Briton was seemingly solely credited for his gains on Sunday.

The French team boss jokingly replied: “He’s engineering the car!”

The response to his quip, “Well, it might have been in one of those memos.”

Hamilton revealed ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend that he’d not only held several meetings with senior figures at Ferrari, but he’d also delivered documents about the things he wants from his Ferrari F1 car.

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Vasseur was also asked about the decision to gamble on an early pit stop for Hamilton, a decision that saw him make up five places.

“It was the strategy that when you are in this situation, you have to gamble a little bit,” he said. “The situation is that we were degrading a lot on the inter and we were far away from the crossover. The inter was a disaster, they were completely gone.

“I think it was the right call, at the right moment, a bit aggressive. We were quite close to do it with Charles, but Charles would have been in traffic, and it meant that we did it with Lewis.

“I think it was the right call.”

Pressed on it being the ‘team’ that made the decision, Vasseur hit back: “Don’t try to split the team and the drivers. It’s always a collective decision.”

That wasn’t the only big call the team made as earlier in the da, Ferrari pulled Hamilton’s car off the grid when they broke parc ferme conditions to change not only his power unit but also his setup.

That gave Hamilton an added boost as he overtook five cars in the space of only a handful of laps.

“I think with Lewis it was the right call, because it’s probably in the first couple of laps that you can overtake, and the downforce helped him to come back,” Vasseur explained. “Then perhaps we didn’t have the general pace to overtake Russell or Albon, and we were stuck behind them with the wing, but at least we came back P7.

“When you make the choice on Saturday at 2pm you have no clue about how many laps you will do on Sunday with the inters. For sure it’s a kind of gamble, and I think it was the right call.”

All in all, the team boss says it was a “great” recovery drive from Hamilton. However, going forward, he’d rather the team did a better job to avoid the need to fight back.

“The mood is good,” he said. “For sure it was not the result that we are expecting with Lewis after qualy, but I think it’s part of the life of a racing team that we reacted collectively very well today.

“But Lewis did a great job. He was quite aggressive at the beginning in the extreme conditions, he was able to fight with Albon until the end with the downforce of Budapest.

“And I think it was a good recovery for him also to be efficient like this, but now for sure that we have to do a better job from the beginning if you want to score podium or wins, you can’t let one session get away.

“We’ll have to do a step next week, but we are all pushing in the same direction.”

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