Lewis Hamilton believes it’s clear Ferrari is favouring Sebastian Vettel over Kimi Raikkonen after Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix.
Vettel went five laps longer than polesitter Raikkonen in his first stint, and when he came out of the pits, Vettel found himself in front of his Finnish team-mate.
The German denied team orders, however, triple champion Hamilton says there is no doubt who is the number one at Ferrari.
“It’s clear to me that Ferrari have chosen their number one driver, so they’re going to be pushing everything to make sure Sebastian will get the maximum on all of his weekends,” said Hamilton,
“With the strategy, it’s very hard for the leading car to get jumped by the second car unless the team decide to favour the other car, so that’s very clear.”
Hamilton suffered a miserable weekend, qualifying down in 14th and coming home in seventh place in the race. Coupled with Vettel’s third win of the season, it moves Hamilton 25 points adrift of the championship lead.
“I haven’t spoken to the team, and I don’t really plan to,” Hamilton replied when asked if he would ask Mercedes for similar treatment.
“Valtteri’s doing a great job, I don’t currently feel that we have to favour one over the other.
“It’s really important that we work as a team more than anything, as we have been.
“There might be some things along the way positioning-wise which, at some stage, become valuable.
“But who knows, it might go the other way – I might need to give Valtteri the upper hand.
“I really have no idea. We’ve just got to make sure we’re ahead of them so we don’t need to be in the same scenario that they’re in today.”
