Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has said he fully trusts his drivers to race each other for position after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc came close to contact while fighting over the final podium spot at the Chinese Grand Prix.
Hamilton ultimately came out on top in the battle with Leclerc for third place after the two drivers traded places multiple times during the race.
Although Hamilton suspected the pair may have made very light contact at one point, Vasseur said the racing was in line with what Ferrari expects of its drivers.
“I have a huge respect for both of them, they are professional and I think it makes sense in this situation to let them race,” he said.
“But I know perfectly that it can also look completely stupid half an hour later, but at the end of the day I think it’s also the best way to build up a team and we need to have this kind of emulation into the team to improve.
“As long as it’s done like it was done today, even a couple of times in the radio they told us that they had good fun, but I don’t want to freeze the position.”
Hamilton made use of a fast start to lead eventual race winner Kimi Antonelli into the first corner, but the advantage over the Mercedes driver only lasted until the second lap.
The Ferraris then managed to keep George Russell at bay until lap 29, but Vasseur said the performance advantage of the Mercedes was obvious once the Ferrari drivers were a second behind and no longer had use of overtake mode.
“At the beginning we were fighting with the Merc,” Vasseur said. “As long as we are in the one second we can have the extra boost and so on, we are able to keep the pace, but as soon as they are making the one second gap, it’s much more difficult.
“We are pushing perhaps a bit more than them on the opening laps, and then after the first ten laps of each team, we are coming back to the four, five, tenths per laps that they have.”
