But given that the suggestion to swap positions actually came from Hamilton to start with, Vasseur has called out FOM for trying to create drama.
“I think this is a joke from FOM because the first call came from Lewis,” he told the media in Shanghai. “Lewis asked us to swap, but to make the show, to create the mess around the situation, they broadcast only the second part of the question.
“I will discuss with them.”
The Ferrari team boss revealed Ferrari had already spoken with the drivers about doing what is “best” for Ferrari in the pre-race briefing.
“Yeah,” he insisted. “I think we have to work for the team and to consider that we have to do the best for Ferrari, and it’s agreed between the cars and the drivers before the race, and it’s not an issue.
“It’s even the best proof of this is that it came from the drivers that ‘okay, I’m losing the pace that I am keen to swap’.”
They know that the drama and soap opera of it all is much more compelling to a wider audience than good racing. That’s why Formula 1 is extremely globally successful while other series with inarguably better wheel-to-wheel action aren’t.
If you can afford F1TV there is at least the Multiviewer app, which has automatic live transcriptions of driver radios. Gives a much better view of what is actually happening than whatever cherry picked messages the TV director chooses to display.
When I tried to go into a driver’s live onboard feed on F1 TV on Sunday, it no longer had the car audio and radio messages. It was the regular broadcast audio, which was super disorienting because you weren’t hearing the car you were looking at.
I hated it. I want the old onboard audio and radio back.
I don’t know if it’s different live as I’ve only watched the replays yet this season due to time zones, but you can choose audio track when in cockpit view, either “team radio” or a commentary language.