25/05/2023
NEWS STORY
Ferrari boss, Frederic Vasseur has laughed off claims that Charles Leclerc is leaving the Italian team for Mercedes, while insisting the team hasn't even spoken to Lewis Hamilton.
The Frenchman's comments come at a time there is increasing talk of the Maranello outfit making a $50m bid for the seven-time champion's service, a situation not helped by the lack of news from Mercedes over the Briton's plans for when his current contract ends later this year.
"Two weeks ago you sent Sainz to Audi and one week ago you sent Leclerc to Mercedes and now I am alone," joked the Frenchman as he was asked about the ongoing speculation.
"At this stage of the season, you will have each week a different story and we are not sending an offer to Lewis Hamilton," he added. "We didn't do it. We didn't have discussions.
"I think every single team on the grid would like to have Hamilton at one stage," he admitted, "but it would be bullshit to not say something like this. If I have discussed with Hamilton, I have had discussed the last twenty years, I have discussed with him almost every single weekend, I don't want to have to stop having discussions with him because you are chasing me.
"For us, it's that we agreed we'd discuss about the contracts later on," he insisted, "and I don't want to change because we had the rumours from someone that Lewis could come.
"They didn't have to reassure me last week when you sent them to Sauber, or for Charles it was Mercedes," he said. "They didn't come to see me, and say ‘Fred, don't worry, it's not true'. We are used to it, we know that each week, we will have new rumours, and we are just focused on the event."
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