Don't be fooled by Ferrari's Formula 1 drivers playing nicely in Brazil; as The Race reports, there are still very real tensions between Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. The drivers and team principal Fred Vasseur got together in Brazil to try to talk things through after Hamilton's extraordinary criticism of Leclerc following their victory-losing Mexico run-in. That meeting proved constructive, and Leclerc and Hamilton were very well-behaved during the Brazilian Grand Prix, even following team orders and leaving each other plenty of room, unlike in Mexico. Hamilton's summary was that everything is good and they had a really good, open discussion.
But you can't compare Mexico and Brazil, so Vasseur didn't bother reaching for what would have been an easy pat-on-the-back. Vasseur noted they had a good discussion on Friday, cleared the situation, and did a good reset on the mindset, leaving his room joking together. All Vasseur can do for now is hope it lasts because that Brazil fight was only ever going to be for minor points-paying positions, not a race win or a podium. So there's every reason to believe that when the Ferrari is back fighting for wins, be it in Las Vegas or Qatar or Abu Dhabi, Hamilton and Leclerc are going to be back fighting tooth and nail.
After all, Leclerc admitted post-meeting that of course there is tension, of course they want to finish ahead of each other, and sometimes they are not going to do things right. In light of the Leclerc-Hamilton tensions, Leclerc's ex-team-mate at Ferrari Carlos Sainz was asked about his time with Leclerc. Hamilton had, after all, pointed to Leclerc's time alongside Sainz and Sebastian Vettel as evidence that he races his team-mates harder. Sainz said he has relatively good memories of his time with Charles and the fights they had, noting that when you're fighting for wins, there's always more pressure and things become naturally a bit more selfish.
Sainz recalled there was plenty of hot moments during the year, but what was more difficult was the fanbase and PR being really ignited and very polarised between Charles and him. He remembered suffering a bit from the very hardcore fans of Charles insulting or wishing him bad, alongside Italian media saying he was not being enough of a number two. Sainz felt it is an inevitable problem with having two equals in the same team, noting it happened in Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari, and you cannot have one without the other.
There are some parallels to the tensions in 2019 when Leclerc managed to steal Ferrari away from four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel as a 21-year-old. Back then, the drivers were free to race, the team principal Mattia Binotto tried to play things fairly, and there was a huge battle for supremacy. Leclerc ultimately won that battle convincingly, with Sainz brought in to replace Vettel, but never as an equal to Leclerc. Leclerc and Sainz had their flashpoints, but things never uncontrollably spilt over for one good reason: Leclerc was ahead of Sainz around two-thirds of the time.
The dynamic therefore was very different, with Leclerc even ending up helping Sainz to the only non-Verstappen victory of 2023 in Singapore. There was ultimately enough of a performance gap for there never to be too much needle between them, as Leclerc didn't see Sainz as a threat to his position as Ferrari's spearhead. Suddenly they're very closely matched, and the Leclerc-Vettel era tension is immediately re-exposed because now there is a threat to Leclerc's position. It's why the prospect of Ferrari's Brazil meeting being any kind of full stop on its Leclerc-Hamilton problem is absolute nonsense, and that's not going to change until Leclerc has destroyed another world champion or until he's the one destroyed by a team-mate.
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