Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur should give Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc “a rap on the knuckled” for their “stroppy” team radio comments during the Australian Grand Prix.

That is the claim of former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher, who believes the behaviour of both Ferrari drivers was “not on” in Melbourne.

Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc accused of ‘stroppy’ team radio remarks

Ferrari endured a challenging start to the F1 2025 season as Leclerc and Hamilton struggled both dry and wet conditions, finishing a distant eighth and 10th respectively.

Reports in Italy have claimed that Ferrari were forced to run a heavily compromised setup in Australia after discovering that the ride height of the SF-25 was too low after Leclerc set the pace in Friday practice, with the first race of 2025 not offering a true reflection of the car’s potential.

Hamilton was heard rejecting the advice of his new race engineer Riccardo Adami, who previously worked with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz, throughout a race he later described as a “crash course” in driving a Ferrari F1 car in wet conditions.

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Leclerc, meanwhile, sarcastically described a comment by his race engineer, Bryan Bozzi, as “words of wisdom.”

Appearing on the German-language Backstage in the Pit Lane show, Schumacher, the former F1 driver and brother of Ferrari legend Michael Schumacher, argued that both drivers crossed a line with their remarks over team radio.

And he has urged Vasseur, who worked with Hamilton and Leclerc in their respectively junior careers before reuniting with the pair at Ferrari, to come down hard on the pair.

He said: “It was like that with both of them. Not only Hamilton, but also Charles Leclerc was relatively stroppy on the radio.

“if I were the team principal right now, I’d call them both into my office and give them both a rap on the knuckles because that’s not on.

“At the end of the day, the whole team is sitting out there doing nothing but trying to help the two out there.

“And if they’re also being stroppy, then I have to say that’s not on. You can say, please, right now is [a] bad [time to talk to me on the radio].”

Schumacher’s comments come after Christian Danner, the former F1 driver, criticised Leclerc’s engineer for his “disgraceful” reaction to the driver’s complaints over water in the cockpit.

Bozzi, who has served as Leclerc’s engineer since last May, told his driver that it “must be the water” after the Monegasque alerted the team to the issue.

Danner, who made 46 F1 starts in the 1980s, was angered by Bozzi’s flippant response, telling Germany’s Motorsport-Magazin: “I think it was actually really disgraceful because the driver says ‘I’ve got a problem here’ out there on the track.

“It was not easy to keep the car under control and he says: ‘Hey, there’s something, I’ve got a leak here, where could it be coming from?’

“The engineer says: ‘It’s probably water.’ You idiot!

“I found that completely out of place, especially towards a driver like Leclerc who isn’t a whiner at all. He’s not someone who constantly complains about something.

“He reported a problem and wanted a solution to where the water could be coming from. An answer would have been, ‘You don’t have a leak, the water bottle is broken,’ or whatever was going on.

“I just found that disgraceful.”

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Speaking to media after the race, meanwhile, Hamilton commented that Adami “did his best” in the pair’s first race working together.

He said: “I think Riccardo did a really good job.

“We’re learning about each other bit by bit. After this, we’ll download, we’ll go through all the comments, things I said and vice versa.

“And generally, I’m not one that likes a lot of information in the race. Unless I need it, I’ll ask for it.

“But he did his best today.”

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