Lewis Hamilton attacks Leclerc again: “I see it too. The same thing happened with Vettel and Sainz. We have to talk. The radios? They are not going to silence me. I have no regrets and I am not going to apologize”

Everyone hoped that, after the mess between Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in Mexico, things would have calmed down in Brazil. But Lewis Hamilton again attacked his Monegasque teammate in his press appearance prior to the Brazilian F1 GP.

The Englishman said he was still “frustrated” at having lost a double that should have gone to Ferrari due to Charles’s attacks in the first corners of last Sunday’s race, when both occupied the first two positions and could have headed for a 1-2 that would have meant a lot for the Scuderia of Maranello.

And when when he was asked he also believed that Leclerc fights harder on the track than against the rest of the drivers on the grid, Hamilton did not bite his tongue. “Yes. I see the same thing as you. In Singapore he was completely on the inside in Turn 1, he had gained the leading position and raised his foot. It was clearly different,” he said in statements published by ‘Motorsport.com’.

“But… if you look at his (previous) teammates, the same thing happened with Sebastian (Vettel) and the same thing happened with Carlos (Sainz),” he expressed, openly.

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur made it clear last Sunday after the race that he had to have a talk with his two drivers to ensure that something like this would not happen again. However, the Team Principal of the red team had to return to Europe and Leclerc did the same to be present at the birth of his daughter, Bianca, something for which Charles was not at the circuit on Thursday (he will be driving on Friday). Therefore, the conversation that Hamilton and Leclerc were supposed to have with their boss has not yet occurred.

“Naturally, I was frustrated and I still am. So we have to talk. We will have those conversations when there is time for it,” Hamilton said.

“We had a chance to win for the team. The team has done an incredible job making improvements this year and I think they have done an extraordinary job. We have scored more points than any other team in the last three or four races. We could have easily done a double (in Mexico), so we have to work to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” he added. Although by saying that they will talk “when there is time”, it seemed to indicate that these talks might not take place in the middle of the Grand Prix.

The atmosphere remains tense, very tense. And in that context, Hamilton wanted to respond to those who criticized him after the race in Mexico for having requested a greater penalty from his teammate Leclerc for having cut Turn 5 when trying to overtake Hamilton. Many criticized that Lewis opened the radio to ask for a sanction for his teammate, because that damaged his own team and the final result they could opt for. Therefore, Lewis wanted to set the record straight.

“They are not going to silence me”

“They’re not going to make me shut up”said the 7-time champion. “I don’t care too much what people think about what I said. “I am a person who openly shows his feelings and I say what I feel at all times,” said the Briton in statements reported by ‘Motorsport.com’. In them, Lewis assures that he was not acting in a calculated manner.

“I saw someone saying that the things I say are calculated, and I want to refute it: When you are in the middle of a race, you have a heart rate of about 170 per minute. You’re driving at 320 km/h and you don’t have time to calculate what you’re saying, or to think about what the media is going to write. You don’t think about that,” he said.

“Of course, there are times when you say things that you may later regret, but I don’t regret it, and I will never apologize for being authentic and sincere. They are not going to silence me. They have never ever been able to silence me. The team has not asked me to stop saying anything, and that’s how things are,” he commented.