{"id":495662,"date":"2025-09-27T02:20:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T06:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=495662"},"modified":"2025-09-27T02:20:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T06:20:23","slug":"villeneuve-thinks-hamilton-deliberately-delayed-leclerc-swap-in-baku","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/villeneuve-thinks-hamilton-deliberately-delayed-leclerc-swap-in-baku\/","title":{"rendered":"Villeneuve thinks Hamilton deliberately delayed Leclerc swap in Baku"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former World Champion Jacques Villeneuve has suggested that Lewis Hamilton intentionally delayed returning a position to Charles Leclerc during the closing moments of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>It was a frustrating weekend for Ferrari at the Baku City Circuit, where Hamilton failed to progress beyond Q2 and Leclerc crashed out in Q3. Both drivers struggled to make progress in Sunday\u2019s race, ultimately finishing eighth and ninth, with Hamilton ahead of his teammate.<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton was allowed past Leclerc mid-race after stopping later and switching to fresher tires, but the agreement was clear: if he couldn\u2019t move further forward, he would need to give the place back. When the moment came, however, Hamilton misjudged his braking and let Leclerc by too late \u2014 effectively keeping the position.<\/p>\n<p>The seven-time world champion apologized to Leclerc after the race, but 1997 title winner Villeneuve believes the move was anything but accidental.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Fred Vasseur explains why Ferrari made the Lewis Hamilton \u2013 Charles Leclerc team order call in Baku \ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddff\ud83d\udc40<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/LewisHamilton?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#LewisHamilton<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/F1?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#F1<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/charlesleclerc?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#charlesleclerc<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AzerbaijanGP?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#AzerbaijanGP<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qDWD5tWcs7\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/qDWD5tWcs7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Sportskeeda Pit Stop (@SKPitStop) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SKPitStop\/status\/1970551874790019271?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">September 23, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>\u201cLewis Hamilton played it well. He played it really well,\u201d Villeneuve said. \u201cFerrari asked Leclerc to let Lewis by, but they didn\u2019t need to. Lewis then, on the new tire, was so much quicker anyway he would have overtaken him. So, the team orders were unnecessary.\u00a0 \u201cSo, I guess that\u2019s why Lewis didn\u2019t really want to let him by again!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former World Champion Jacques Villeneuve has suggested that Lewis Hamilton intentionally delayed returning a position to Charles Leclerc during the closing moments of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":495663,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[17927,16968,17680,17139],"news_category":[16921,16715],"gn_keywords":[18545,17744,17916,1081],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"\"He played it really well\", thinks the Canadian after Azerbaijan controversy in Ferrari","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/495662"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/495662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495664,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/495662\/revisions\/495664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495662"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=495662"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=495662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}