Ferrari

The seven-time champion is a supporter of Vasseur, who was instrumental in signing him.

Speaking during the drivers’ news conference before this weekend’s United States Grand Prix, Hamilton said: “It is a little bit distracting for us as a team. The team have made it clear where they stand in terms of re-signing Fred.

“Fred and the whole team are working really hard on a future for the team.”

Vasseur’s contract was due to expire at the end of this season, but it was renewed just two and a half months ago.

Ferrari tend not to comment on stories about the future of the team, considering it media speculation.

But when reports linking Horner to the team first emerged in the summer, Ferrari used channels to communicate to the media that there was no truth in the claim. The company’s position has not changed since.

McLaren have traced the engine failure in last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix that dented Norris’ title hopes to a broken oil line – a McLaren issue rather than a problem with the Mercedes engine.

Leclerc’s fastest time was his third attempt to do a lap on the soft tyres after aborting his first two runs.

The second incident led to a scare because Leclerc passed a Sauber just after a red flag was thrown because of gravel on track, despite braking as hard as he could.

He was worried he would receive a penalty, but stewards immediately reviewed the incident and accepted there was nothing he could do.

Verstappen was 0.575secs off Hamilton, while the second Williams of Alex Albon was seventh.

A number of drivers ran wide during the session, and the red flag was as a result of Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar running off track at the Ascari chicane and spraying the circuit with gravel.

Gravel at the second Lesmo, deposited by Norris, also needed to be cleared.

Other drivers to run wide and kick up gravel included Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, who was ninth fastest behind George Russell’s Mercedes.

Russell ended the session parked on the grass beside the track before the Roggia chicane as a result of a power loss, which left him stuck in seventh gear with the rear wheels locked.

Hadjar completed the top 10.

FANS are concerned for Lewis Hamilton after his dejected message to his Ferrari colleagues.

Hamilton had a nightmare Hungarian Grand Prix today, finishing in a disappointing 12th.

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The seven-time world champion failed to pick up any points and sounded like a broken man over the team radio post-race.

Hamilton said: “Really sorry about this weekend guys, for losing you points.”

He also reportedly sat in his car for some time after parking it up.

It comes after the Brit’s woeful qualifying session yesterday that saw him exit in Q2 while team-mate Charles Leclerc secured a shock pole.

Hamilton again sounded crestfallen over the team radio, saying: “It’s me every time. I’m useless, absolutely useless.

“The team have no problem. You’ve seen the car’s on pole so we probably need to change driver.”

Told by a member of the Ferrari team that his assessment was wrong, Hamilton replied: “It clearly is. I just drove terribly. It is what it is.”

Hamilton has not finished on the podium in 14 races since making his move to the Scuderia.

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And to cap a disastrous weekend for Ferrari in Hungary, Leclerc slipped to fourth and slammed the team over the radio.

He raged: “This is so incredibly frustrating. We have lost all competitiveness.

“You just had to listen to me, I would have found a different way of managing those issues.

“Now it’s just undriveable. Undrivable. It’s a miracle if we finish on the podium.”

McLaren’s Lando Norris won the Grand Prix and celebrated by kissing his model girlfriend Margarida Corceiro.

The move constitutes an expression of faith in Vasseur’s leadership after the first hitch this year in progress under him.

Vasseur was appointed after Ferrari removed his predecessor Mattia Binotto, following a 2022 season which the team started as the fastest on the grid but saw their title challenge collapse through poor reliability, stuttering car development compared to rivals Red Bull and operational failings.

Bequeathed a difficult car at the start of 2023, Vasseur led a turnaround to the point that Ferrari were the only team to win a race other than Red Bull that season, with Carlos Sainz in Singapore.

Last year, after a slow start, they came on strong in the second part of the season and narrowly missed out on beating McLaren to the constructors’ title.

It was McLaren’s first such triumph since 1998; it would have been Ferrari’s since 2008.

Vasseur was also instrumental in Ferrari signing seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton over the winter of 2023-24 to join Charles Leclerc in their driver line-up starting from this season.

However, expecting to progress and fight for both titles in 2025, Ferrari have struggled this season.

Hamilton won the sprint race in China, the second race of the season, from pole position, but has scored no grand prix podium positions.

Leclerc has five, his best result a second place in Monaco.

Ferrari are second in the constructors’ championship, 268 points behind McLaren and 28 ahead of Mercedes in third.

Leclerc and Hamilton are fifth and sixth in the drivers’ championship, behind the leading drivers for the Red Bull and Mercedes teams, Max Verstappen and George Russell, both of whom have won at least one race.

It’s inevitable that Ferrari are facing this criticism. After Leclerc and Hamilton qualified 11th and 12th at their first home race of the season in Imola, Leclerc described the team as being “P-nowhere”.

Both drivers have bemoaned the lack of upgrades. The first of these since the fourth race in Bahrain finally arrived in Austria last weekend, and both drivers agreed they were a step forward, but that it would take time to judge how much. More are coming.

Nevertheless, Vasseur insists the car is better than the team have shown in recent races.

“The initial goal was to fight for the championship,” he said in Canada, “but I think it’s true for us, it’s true for McLaren, for Red Bull, for Mercedes. We are all in this mood to fight for the championship at the beginning of the season.

“If you compare with expectations, probably McLaren is one step ahead compared to everybody. And we didn’t do a good job on our side.

“Just speaking about us, we didn’t do a good job, in a couple of races.”

He points out that, after both cars were disqualified in China, they were 60 points behind Red Bull and 40 behind Mercedes two races into the season. Now, they are second in the constructors’ championship. On the flip side, they have nearly half the points of McLaren.

Vasseur describes this as “a decent recovery”.

The fact Ferrari have a stronger combined driver line-up than Red Bull and Mercedes is reflected in the fact that, despite their position in the constructors’ championship, Leclerc is fifth in the drivers’ – behind both McLaren drivers and the lead drivers from Red Bull and Mercedes.

“McLaren are still one step ahead,” Vasseur says. “It means we have to continue to try to do a better job each day and improve.

“You have to put everything together in the right place if you want to achieve a good result today, because in the tyre usage and the tyre performance, or what performance you get from the tyres, I think there is much more than between the cars.

“The car doesn’t matter. If the team is doing a very good job on the tyres, they will be in front. It will be like this until the end of the season. But it’s the same for everybody, we have to do a better job.”

As for Hamilton, he sees this as a building year for 2026, when new rules bring in revised cars and engines and Ferrari expect to be fighting at the very front.

He has generally not been especially comfortable with the type of cars introduced with the 2022 regulations, which demand a different driving style from those that came before. Next year’s cars are different in design again, and may well be different in driving character, too.

“The fact is with this car hopefully we can still fight for second in the constructors’ championship,” Hamilton says. “That would be great.

“But I want a car that can win next year. So that’s the priority. That’s what we’ve come here to get.”

LEGENDARY racing driver Michael Schumacher’s Monaco-winning Ferrari has sold for a staggering £13.4million.

Schumi raced the F2001 to victory twice in 2001 – including the famous Monaco Grand Prix.

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Chassis number 211 made its final appearance at the 2001 Hungarian Grand Prix where the racing legend qualified on pole position and took top step on the podium.

The icon went on to win the title that year – his fourth of seven – with a records points haul ahead of team-mate Rubens Barrichello.

The F2001’s dominance also saw Ferrari take its 11th contructors’ title.

The historic motor was sold by RM Sotheby’s for an eye-watering £13.43million.

It marks the most expensive of Schumacher’s Formula One cars to be sold at auction.

The Ferrari F2001 was a cornerstone of Michael Schumacher and Ferrari’s record-setting, multiple Formula 1 World Championship-winning pomp at the turn of the 21st Century,” the car’s listing reads.

“Chassis 211 holds the remarkable distinction of being the only Ferrari aboard which the German won both the Monaco Grand Prix and Drivers’ title in the same season, as the Scuderia clinched the 2001 Constructors’ crown.

“A two-time Grand Prix winner with a brace of World Championships to its name, chassis 211 is among the most significant of modern-day race cars.”

Schumacher’s life changed entirely after a tragic skiing crash that left him with horrific brain injuries.

The F1 legend was given the best possible treatment as he was put into a medically induced coma, had his body temperature lowered and underwent hours of tricky operations on his brain.

Back in 2013, the retired seven-time world champion, and his then 14-year-old son set off on the Combe de Saulire ski run in the exclusive French resort of Meribel.

Footage from his helmet camera revealed he was not travelling at excessive speed when his skis struck a rock hidden beneath the snow.

He catapulted forward 11.5ft and crashed into a boulder head first that split his helmet into two and left him needing to be airlifted to hospital for two life-saving operations.

At one point his family were told to brace themselves for the worst case scenario as the situation was much worse than originally believed.

At the time, medics said Schumacher was likely to stay in an induced coma for at least 48 hours as his body and mind recovered.

But the coma ended up lasting 250 days – more than eight months.

After he woke up in June 2014, he was discharged from hospital and sent to his home in Lake Geneva to get further treatment.

Since then his wife Corinna and his inner circle of friends have expertly avoided almost anything leaking out about his health status.

Only small amounts of information have been released including reports that Schumacher was in a wheelchair but can react to things around him.

In 2019, it was said that Schumacher was set to undergo breakthrough stem cell therapy in a bid to regenerate and rebuild his nervous system.

Renowned France cardiologist Dr Philippe Menasche, who had operated on him previously, was set to carry out the treatment that would see cells from his heart go to his brain.

Following the treatment at the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris, he was said to be “conscious”, although few other details were given about his state.

The Ferrari driven to victory by Formula One legend Michael Schumacher at the 2001 Monaco Grand Prix has been sold for 15.98m euros (£13.43m) at auction.

He also raced in the F2001 to win the Hungarian Grand Prix and clinch the fourth of his seven world titles in that year.

The car was sold by RM Sotheby’s before qualifying for this year’s Monaco Grand Prix and became the most expensive car driven by the German, 56, to be sold at auction.

It was also the fourth most expensive F1 car ever sold – the world record was set in February when a Mercedes ‘streamliner’ raced by Sir Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio went for £42.75m.

Previously, the most paid for a car driven by Schumacher was the £9.75m bid for his F2003 back in 2002.

Ferrari will hope to emulate Schumacher’s 2001 success in Monte Carlo with Charles Leclerc second, behind McLaren’s Lando Norris, on the grid for Sunday’s race.