Formula One Management has held talks with Ferrari after the team complained over its use of Lewis Hamilton’s radio messages during yesterday’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur reportedly described FOM’s editing of Hamilton’s messages as a “joke.”FOM monitors each drivers’ live radio communications in real time during a grand prix. While all or the majority of them are played on the drivers’ onboard channels available via F1 TV, only an edited portion of them are included in the world television feed.
Vasseur complained that the selection of Hamilton’s messages gave a misleading impression of his role in the swap of positions between the team’s cars on lap 21 of yesterday’s race.
Hamilton originally suggested the cars swap places during lap 18. He told race engineer Riccardo Adami: “I think I’m going to let Charles go, because I’m struggling.” However this message was not played on the world television feed.
The first radio message indicating Ferrari were considering a change of order to appear on the world feed was played on lap 20. This was a clip of a message from the previous lap, in which Adami said “we are swapping cars turn 14,” and Hamilton replied: “When he’s closer, yeah.”
Vasseur felt the choice of radio messages overlooked Hamilton’s role in the team orders. An FOM spokesperson told RaceFans this had not been done deliberately.
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“There was absolutely no intention of presenting a misleading narrative regarding the Ferrari team radio,” they said. “Due to other situations developing during the race the message from Lewis was not played but this was not intentional.”
The discussions at Ferrari coincided with other developments in the race, including Lando Norris passing George Russell following their pit stops.
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Roberto Fratelli (@rfratelli)
24th March 2025, 13:35
Of course it was intentional, look how many engagements it generated at social media. Several fans (me included) would have a totally different judgment if the initial message from HAM suggesting the swap would have been played first.
Kringle
24th March 2025, 15:03
+1
That’s really bad to sculpt the release of messages. Their job is to present the facts and action as it happens. There was nothing stopping FOM from playing the initial message beforehand, or indeed playing the messages in succession at a later point.
Dave The Drummer (@davethedrummer)
25th March 2025, 9:14
Seems like should be their job to present the facts and action as it happens, and a lot of people seem to think that that is their job. But it is not.
Their job is to provide return to shareholders. There are no other jobs. Everything they do is focused to that end.
Coventry Climax
24th March 2025, 15:40
Sure, but the biggest joke of all these days, is the racing itself, so this is a nice deflection from that.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
24th March 2025, 13:57
Do love when the teammate behind, with DRS, say they’re so much faster. And then they get by and go no where.
And F1 definitely did it on purpose. HAM is a tire management racer and RUS and LEC are not which is why he usually lets them pass
Patrick (@paeschli)
24th March 2025, 14:12
Hamilton managed his tyres so well he did an extra pit stop.
SteveP
24th March 2025, 15:32
Leclerc managed his tyres so well the car was underweight.
Unless you want to suggest that the car was illegally underweight irrespective of tyre wear…
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
24th March 2025, 22:01
@paeschli Technically HAM didn’t need to pit. Ferrari made the call to try to gain a position or 2 with the change. VER was going to pass him. They didn’t lose position with the strategy. It would have been more interesting if they did it 5 laps earlier when VER was 4 or 5 seconds behind because HAM would have come out closer with fresher tires. Don’t matter in the end position wise on the track and also because both cars were disqualified.
Edvaldo
25th March 2025, 14:44
Leclerc also needed an extra pit stop. At the end of the race, the gap between them was exactly the same as before Hamilton went for his second stop.
Now compare that to Max, who was behind Hamilton then and finished the race 9 seconds down the road.
Riccard
24th March 2025, 19:10
So actually what happened here is that the car in front (Hamilton) said he was struggling and the team should let Leclerc past. It wasn’t down to Leclerc agitating… it came from Hamilton saying he was struggling and requesting the switch.
Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
25th March 2025, 7:39
It is virtually always harder to overtake the same car. Leclerc also had a huge lack of downforce, which will have made overtaking in the corners much harder. Without the damage, he likely would have passed even without any assistance form Hamilton.
André
25th March 2025, 17:04
The impact of that missing endplate on the performance of Leclerc’s car should be looked at in detail, because on a front-limited track like that, in theory Leclerc should have had terrible front grip. But that wasn’t the case. Maybe the missing endplate even helped. The left side was running much closer to the ground than it would otherwise do.
Nikos (@exeviolthor)
24th March 2025, 13:58
It was either intentional or very stupid.
It seems that FOM prefer to be branded as stupid rather than admit that they have gone too far.
SteveP
24th March 2025, 15:36
Fair comment. After all, Hanlon’s razor states: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
24th March 2025, 23:41
actually it doesn’t matter what people think, it only matters what people do.
It doesn’t matter if you are stupid or neglectful, it only matters what you produce, or the output, the effect.
the prime example would be : people in government rewarding themselves for screwing up. Would you call these people stupid, or malicious ?
Hanlon’s razor really only is appreciable when judging intent. And that really only matters under certain laws where intent, carries a higher form of punishment.
In the real world, Hanlon has no place, and again, it only matters what people do, or the result. And the result for F1 TV, was to present false drama, and selfishness on the side of Hamilton, when he was just trying to make the best out of a poor situation.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
24th March 2025, 23:43
when we get in to the habit of caring about what people think, not how they think, or why they think, but what they think, then we are crossing boundaries we ought not to be. Because boundaries really are everything, and people must be judged on what they say, or what they do, not what they think.
Patrick (@paeschli)
24th March 2025, 14:11
Maybe the FIA should be fined whenever they broadcast misinformation ? The profits would go into one big pot the drivers can take from whenever they get fined for swearing.
David BR (@david-br)
24th March 2025, 14:56
Bare minimum must be Max-style community service for fibbing.
SteveP
24th March 2025, 15:38
@paeschli
Good idea, but what would they do with the large excess at the end of the season?
Bob C
25th March 2025, 7:55
Well, if there is a huge pot of swearing-money unused and available at the last race, I will definitely tune in, just to listen :-)
rpaco
25th March 2025, 10:46
Excellent idea!
David BR (@david-br)
24th March 2025, 14:55
Let’s say we believe FOM (I don’t). Was their any admission it had been misleading or even [swoons] an apology? Has the TV director been fined 40000 euros or what ever the going rate for ‘radio misdeamenours’ is?
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
24th March 2025, 15:03
Of course it’s intentional. If it wasn’t, they’d not show maybe 10 radio messages per race. They pick them up, and only show the juiciest.
Otherwise, why would they broadcast that exchange between Leclerc and his engineer at Melbourne? because it was hillarious, it bore no relevance to the race at all.
S Arkazam
24th March 2025, 19:05
It’s funny though to read here how many people here feign surprise or are even upset about it.
MichaelN
24th March 2025, 15:21
The first message by Hamilton was not interesting. Drivers make suggestions and ask questions ask the time. It only became relevant when Ferrari issued the order.
This seems a total non-issue and, sad to say, the only joke here is Ferrari scoring zero points in the GP.
Ajaxn
24th March 2025, 21:35
Agreed.
They obviously can’t broadcast every driver/engineer interaction and so make a choice when its interesting.
In this case they lost the context for what followed. Its live folks and so seemingly misleading narratives like this will occur.
Sihle
24th March 2025, 23:52
How could it be not interesting? It’s hugely interesting if can have a bearing on the race!
MichaelN
25th March 2025, 14:20
FOM hears all the radio chatter and has to decide if it’s worth interrupting the commentary for. They don’t want to just broadcast everything. In the moment, Hamilton’s suggestion didn’t seem like it might have immediate consequences, nor was there much at stake given that it’s only race 2 of the season and Ferrari wasn’t exactly challenging for the win.
So I can see why they wouldn’t push that snippet to the world feed. But it’s definitely a judgement call, and I’m sure some want to hear as much as possible.
PeteB (@peteb)
24th March 2025, 15:37
To be honest, I don’t think it was intentional. I don’t think they’d have thought about it that quickly during the race and they wouldn’t have known how things were going to play out. Hamilton complained his car was slow and suggested letting Charles past and there’s no chance someone immediately though “hmmm.. I know! We won’t play that message because Ferrari might say “let Charles past now” and maybe Hamilton will delay doing it so we can make him look like he’s ignoring team orders!”
Liberty will absolutely love that it has happened and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve arranged meetings to discuss how to do more of this in future but in this instance, I think it’s just an unfortunate sequence of events. I can see why it would have annoyed Ferrari and Hamilton though and with Netflix making fictional documentaries loosely based on F1, I’m not surprised there’s a lack of trust.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
24th March 2025, 16:55
During the race, Sky reported that Lewis had suggested a swap. When the audio mentioned above was then played a few laps later, they were clearly confused as it suggested reluctance on Hamilton’s part.
I find it hard to imagine that the FOM weren’t intentionally trying to mislead us all. Maybe Lewis was wearing a piercing they didn’t like?
Alan Locatelli
24th March 2025, 17:10
Sky Italy didn’t pick that up, and followed the misleading narrative of Lewis challenging the team order.
Ronald
24th March 2025, 18:21
Nothing new here. FOM has been making up story out radio’s for years. Why is this an issue now?
Might it have something to do with Ferrari looking for a distraction from the fact they did not have one, but two cars that ran illegal?
Ferdi
25th March 2025, 9:14
That’s what I do not get either. The scripting ever since Liberty stepped in is blatantly obvious. Liberty is an entertainment franchises company that has no culture for, nor interest whatsoever in, sports. Yes, they script and dramatise. They need to increase value for their shareholders, that’s their core business. They are not here for the sport, they are here for themselves and their financial targets.
Mark Z.
24th March 2025, 18:58
I seem to recall in recent years an F1 journalist — likely either Joe Saward or Dieter Rencken — reporting from a tour of FOM’s broadcast facility at Biggin Hill that the work of scanning the team radios and editing the clips in near real time was assigned to just one person. If that’s still the case, I could absolutely chalk this up to an honest mistake by someone who simply missed the earlier message — and I would hope that that person would be given some help for that task!
ianhaycox (@ianhaycox)
24th March 2025, 19:18
Drive To Survive or FOM, take your pick
AlanD
24th March 2025, 23:47
The earlier message does change the perception of the team dynamics, but we only know that with hindsight. What we don’t know is what else was happening when Hamilton made that first call. If the TV broadcast every message from Hamilton and Verstapppen, just in case, people would soon complain that there are 18 other drivers out there.
Mog
25th March 2025, 0:58
From memory, nothing else was happening really…there werent many other radio messages being broadcast, and the positions in the race was status quo and stable. It was a race without drama.
Sky did verbally correct the impression left by the broadcast radio message. But that was simply a good pick up at the time.
I’m sorry, the impression I’m left with is they were trying to spice up a boring race with Hamilton drama. I agree with Fred v on this one.
P
25th March 2025, 20:02
Terrible and must be stopped. If you go to the highlights on the sky sports website then to 7:05. The commentators states” They’re swapping cars….that wasn’t something Lewis came up with”. So its not only to add drama, it’s actually giving false representation of his character and damaging. Must be fixed.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
25th March 2025, 9:29
In reality this is nothing new. For years the broadcaster has cherry picked driver conversations to add to the “Drama” during a race.
It tends to be designed to make a driver really sweary, or unhappy about a particular thing rather than being actually informative.
I just find it strange that FOM seems to have taken offence to someone saying it out loud.