‘Focus on driving and talk less’: Ferrari president hits back at Lewis Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton has been told to “focus on driving and talk less” in a rebuke from the Ferrari president, John Elkann, which was almost certainly a reaction to Hamilton’s outspoken description of his first season with the team as a “nightmare”.Hamilton has endured a difficult debut year with Ferrari, with the team underperforming and the seven‑time champion having a trying time adapting to a new environment and practices.After another disappointing race at the São Paulo Grand Prix on Sunday, when forced to retire the car on lap 37, Hamilton was unusually blunt, stating: “This is a nightmare and I’ve been living it for a while.The flip between the dream of driving for this amazing team and then the nightmare of the results that we’ve had.”Elkann, who was instrumental in persuading Hamilton to join Ferrari and with whom the British driver is friends, gave an equally forthright response, speaking in Milan.
“They should focus on driving and talk less,” he said of his two drivers,“We still have a few races left, and it’s not impossible to finish second,”Hamilton is sixth in the drivers’ championship, 66 points behind his teammate Charles Leclerc and still without a podium finish,Leclerc was also knocked out of the race at Interlagos through no fault of his own when Kimi Antonelli crashed into him, dropping the Scuderia from second to fourth in the constructors’ championship,Hamilton had to retire after he took floor damage in a misjudged attempt to pass the Alpine of Franco Colapinto, for which he was later given a five-second penalty.
Elkann intimated he expected better.“In Formula One, on the one hand, we have the mechanics who did their job, including poles and pit stops,” he said.“The engineers did the same, with the car clearly improving.The rest wasn’t up to par.”Hamilton and the team are already looking towards 2026, when new regulations offer a chance for a full reset and he will have had a full season of acclimatisation.
He has been active in pursuing change within Ferrari.It is believed he was somewhat taken aback at the team’s organisation and methodologies when he began working with them and that he felt the decision-making process was ungainly.In Belgium this year he revealed he had held a series of meetings with the key players at Ferrari including Elkann and the chief executive, Benedetto Vigna, and gone as far as compiling two documents detailing suggestions for the progress he believes is needed to turn around their fortunes.Meanwhile, Lando Norris, who won in Brazil, has pointedly played down expectations he is poised to secure his first F1 world championship after taking a commanding lead in the title race, warning he had a long way to go.Sign up to The RecapThe best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s actionafter newsletter promotionNorris won with a commanding drive from pole at Interlagos while his title rival and McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri could manage only fifth.
Max Verstappen delivered a magnificent performance to come back from 19th to third but his heroics only limited the damage to his title hopes as Norris opened a clear gap on his two competitors,However Norris, who also won with a dominant drive at the previous round in Mexico, remained circumspect about his chances, insisting he was not considering becoming champion yet,“I’m not thinking about it, not yet, not at all,” he said,“It’s a great win, but to see Max and how quick he was, that’s where my mind is at and there is a long way to go,”Norris leads Piastri by 24 points and Verstappen by 49 with three meetings remaining and 83 points available.
He could afford to finish second to Piastri in all three races and the sprint in Qatar and still seal the title.But he maintained he did not believe the last two races had been a turning point in the championship.“No, it just feels like another weekend where I came here to try and win, to get the most points I could and did that,” he said.“I also did that last weekend.Neither are turning points, they’re just strong results, which is exactly what I need, exactly what I’m fighting for every single weekend.
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Billionaire Tory donor gives £200,000 to Reform UK
The company owned by the billionaire Conservative donor Lord Bamford has donated £200,000 to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.The JCB chair, who has given millions of pounds to the Tories and bankrolled Boris Johnson’s wedding celebrations, disclosed the donation at the weekend, alongside one of equal size to the Conservatives.The Staffordshire-based heavy machinery manufacturer said it had donated to the Tories and Reform because it wanted to support parties that “believe in small business”.JCB is the world’s third-largest construction equipment company, with 22 plants on four continents, employing 19,000 people worldwide. Its sales turnover in 2024 was £5
Lady Howells of St Davids obituary
Like so many thousands of other young people of her generation, Rosalind Howells, who has died aged 94, left the Caribbean in 1951 with her head and heart filled with plans and dreams and intent upon her own hopes of a future possible professional career as a lawyer in Britain. Having arrived in London and recognised the grim everyday realities of inequality and discrimination that faced black people, she dedicated the rest of her life to doing something about it.She spent nearly half a century in south London working to improve the housing, education, health services and lifestyle of her community and then, on official “retirement”, went to the House of Lords in 1999. Tthe next 20 years she spent expounding her demands for equality to a wider audience, at Westminster and on international platforms in China, the Middle East and the US, seeking still to transform society and open the doors for others.She was not interested in rhetoric without reality, even less in tokenism
Can Nigel Farage emulate success enjoyed by Italy’s far-right Giorgia Meloni?
Reform’s leader may hope to tread a similar path to Italy’s prime minister, but she is an experienced parliamentarian open to collaboration and compromiseOne of the more striking images from June’s G7 summit showed a small group of world leaders engaged in an impromptu and informal evening chat at the venue’s restaurant. In the foreground of that photo was a familiar blond head: Giorgia Meloni.During her three years as the Italian prime minister, Meloni has moved beyond her hard-right populism, not to mention her fascism-adjacent origins, to earn at least the respect of other leaders – Keir Starmer among them – for her pragmatism and flexibility. Among those watching this transformation from the sidelines will be the man hoping to be Starmer’s replacement: Nigel Farage.If campaigning is, as the political truism goes, conducted in poetry while government is prose, this is doubly so for insurgents and outsiders, whose careers are built on promising rapid and straightforward solutions to seemingly intractable national troubles
King Charles and senior politicians lead UK Remembrance Sunday service at Cenotaph – as it happened
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, and other senior politicians have laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in central London to honour the service and sacrifice of those who lost their lives in conflict.Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, home secretary Shabana Mahmood and Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle were among the other political figures who laid floral tributes during the Remembrance Sunday service.King Charles led a two-minute silence at the Cenotaph in central London as senior royals and senior politicians, including the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the leader of the Conservative party Kemi Badenoch, gathered for the national memorial service on Remembrance Sunday.The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, vowed that Labour is going to “grip” the prison crisis as the government continues to come under pressure after a number of high-profile cases of prisoners being wrongly released. Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips this morning, Nandy confirmed that four wrongly released prisoners are still at large
AI-powered nimbyism could grind UK planning system to a halt, experts warn
The government’s plan to use artificial intelligence to accelerate planning for new homes may be about to hit an unexpected roadblock: AI-powered nimbyism.A new service called Objector is offering “policy-backed objections in minutes” to people who are upset about planning applications near their homes.It uses generative AI to scan planning applications and check for grounds for objection, ranking these as “high”, “medium” or “low” impact. It then automatically creates objection letters, AI-written speeches to deliver to the planning committees, and even AI-generated videos to “influence councillors”.Kent residents Hannah and Paul George designed the system after estimating they spent hundreds of hours attempting to navigate the planning process when they opposed plans to convert a building near their home into a mosque
Developers met ministers dozens of times over planning bill while ecologists were shut out
The scale of lobbying of ministers by developers on Labour’s landmark planning changes, which seek to rip up environmental rules to boost growth, can be exposed as campaigners make last-ditch attempts to secure protections for nature.The government published its planning and infrastructure bill in March. Before and after the bill’s publication the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and housing minister Matthew Pennycook have met dozens of developers in numerous meetings. The body representing professional ecologists, meanwhile, has not met one minister despite requests to do so.The government’s planning bill will reach its final stages before it is given royal assent in the coming days, after months of tussling between ministers, nature groups and ecologists
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LOL: is this the ultimate texting faux pas (and what should you use instead)?