Ferrari faces Lewis Hamilton-Charles Leclerc management test after Dutch GP, says pundit

Agosto 30, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

Former F1 TV pundit Will Buxton has questioned Ferrari’s ability to handle the dynamic between seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc.

During an episode of the Up To Speed podcast following the Dutch Grand Prix, Buxton compared Ferrari’s pitwall hesitation with Mercedes’ quick team orders. While the Brackley outfit seamlessly orchestrated a position swap, Ferrari avoided issuing team orders, leading to a string of frustrated radio messages from Hamilton.

Buxton argued that the incident was a test for Ferrari’s management rather than the drivers themselves.

Leclerc has been with Ferrari since 2019 and is very much embedded within the team. Hamilton joined the Maranello outfit in 2025 after a successful 12-year stint with Mercedes. While the 41-year-old took some time to adjust to his new surroundings, he returned to top form in 2026.

“Is this Ferrari’s first real test of the Charles and Lewis relationship? Well, if it’s not a test of their relationship, it’s a test of how the team handles it because Charles is the golden child, right? Always has been. He’s Ferrari through and through. He’s probably never going to race anywhere else. It’s his place, and he’s been there since he was a kid,” Buxton explained.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images

“And then you’ve got Lewis, the GOAT, seven-time champion. You can’t please both, right? In an F1 team, one driver’s going to be p***ed, one driver’s going to come out happy. That’s just how it works out, especially in these kinds of scenarios. And you kind of have to take your medicine sometimes and realise that you’re going to p*** off one.

“You can’t keep both of them happy in every single eventuality. It doesn’t happen. Lewis has experience of a team that executes immediately at Mercedes, and he wants that world championship-winning mentality at Ferrari because unless you have that, you’re never going to win a title.

“So I can see the frustration in Lewis of being like, ‘Guys, we’re making ourselves look like d***s here. This is stupid.’ Because he has experience of the other side of the coin.

“Is it a Ferrari problem? Is it a Charles-Lewis problem? How quickly do they have to nip it in the bud? Do they have to just figure out what they’re doing and actually get it written down, or understand that the level of execution that they have at the moment just simply isn’t what a championship-winning team has?”