Sky Sports F1's Bernie Collins has suggested Ferrari should introduce repercussions rule to the team after Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc's contentious incident in Mexico. Hamilton called for "serious talks" after Leclerc tried to overtake him at Turn 4 on the opening lap of Sunday's race, which allowed Max Verstappen to take advantage of the squabble to go on and win the Mexico City Grand Prix. Both Hamilton and Leclerc have held discussions with Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur ahead of this weekend's Sao Paulo Grand Prix, but the content of those conversations will not be revealed until the drivers face the media on Thursday in Brazil.
Former F1 strategist and Sky Sports F1's Collins says the incident is not a huge problem for Ferrari but they must come up with a plan going forward after Hamilton confirmed there are no rules of engagement at the Scuderia when it comes to racing your team-mate. "It's something that if they sit down together, talk it through, come to some sort of mutual agreement, there's some sort of penalty for the drivers if they don't stick to it," she said on Sky Sports' The F1 Show podcast. "I think it can't just be like a gentleman's agreement that we're going to discuss in the office and there are no repercussions.
There needs to be some sort of repercussion. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "I think we've seen that a little bit with McLaren where they had this sort of rules of engagement. And then we think the repercussion is if they go against the rules of engagement, they lose a qualifying preference the next week.
So that's a penalty, but it's not like really harsh, so something like that, they need to be having those discussions. It's not the first time that two team-mates have taken each other off track and one of the rules in F1 is if it's happened before it will happen again." Team principal Vasseur has suggested not enough respect was given in his drivers' battle but did not blame either Hamilton or Leclerc. Hamilton's former team-mate and 2016 F1 world champion Nico Rosberg believes Vasseur needs to make clear "what is acceptable and what's not".
"Fred Vasseur, he needs to start to act. Once again, as Lewis said before the race, there was no discussion, like clear racing guidelines between the two. It needs to happen, otherwise it's going to keep going like this," he said.
"It gets really bad when the drivers take it in their own hands and disregard whatever has been discussed and just take it in their own hands and sort it out on track and barge the other guy out the way. That can very quickly happen and it's already kind of happening." Since becoming Ferrari team-mates at the start of 2025, Hamilton and Leclerc have often found themselves fighting together, particularly this year as their pace has been evenly matched. They had a race-long battle earlier this season at the Chinese Grand Prix, which saw them make brief tyre to tyre contact, but there was little negative reaction, with Hamilton calling it "the best racing I've ever experienced in Formula 1".
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