Fred Vasseur sends clear warning to Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc

Lewis Hamilton looked to have taken number one status off of Charles Leclerc thanks to some early-season form, but that’s all been flipped on its head since Silverstone.

Leclerc won his first race of the season on Hamilton’s home turf, and has outperformed him in the following two races in Belgium and Hungary.

As such, the gap between the pair is just 31 points, and they’ll increasingly be sharing the same tarmac going forward.

There were mouth-watering signs of how that could look at Round 2 in China, where the Ferrari pair went wheel-to-wheel around Shanghai’s twists and turns, keeping it respectful, but on the edge.

And in a reminder of how things should be at the Scuderia, team principal Vasseur reiterated his expectations.

“They must respect the team, just as we respect them; they must behave correctly,” he told AutoHebdo.

Thankfully for Vasseur, he doesn’t have the same issues as his rival team principals, so far at least.

Mercedes’ Toto Wolff saw his drivers Kimi Antonelli and George Russell come to blows in Canada, the same location where McLaren pair Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri did the same in 2025.

Yet one team that doesn’t have such problems is the Max Verstappen-focused Red Bull, and Vasseur was keen to fire in a cheeky dig.

“Part of the performance always stems from the comparison between the two drivers,” he said.