Ferrari's Hamilton-Leclerc Question: Why a 2027 Pecking Order Is the Wrong Fix

Damon Hill has urged Ferrari to make Lewis Hamilton their clear lead driver for 2027, while Max Verstappen has said he would never run two number one drivers in the same team. Between them, two world champions have framed the question Maranello must answer this winter. With three rounds of the season remaining, Hamilton is fourth in the drivers’ championship on 261 points, 12 ahead of Charles Leclerc in fifth.

Twelve points and one win apiece

Twenty rounds into the year, neither Ferrari driver has established a decisive edge. Each has won once. The 12 points separating them amount to less than half a victory, and both are caught in a tight group. Hamilton sits a single point behind George Russell for third, while Leclerc is only three ahead of Lando Norris in sixth.

Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix summed up their season in miniature. Leclerc climbed from 14th on the grid to finish eighth. Hamilton started 20th and came home ninth, a lap down. Ferrari left Interlagos with six points, while Red Bull and McLaren took 33 each and Mercedes 22. In the same race, Verstappen went from 21st to second. That comparison says more about the relative pace of the cars in São Paulo than about the drivers, but it shows plainly where Ferrari stand.

At the top, the season has long since been decided. Andrea Kimi Antonelli has nine wins and 390 points, 111 clear of Verstappen. With three weekends left, that margin cannot be overturned. In the constructors’ standings, Ferrari are second on 510 points, 95 ahead of Red Bull and 142 behind Mercedes.

That is the context for the debate. Ferrari are not losing a title because their drivers are taking points off each other. They are a distant second to a team that has won 12 of the 20 races.

Hill’s case for Hamilton, and Verstappen’s objection

As reported by PlanetF1 and GPfans, Hill has argued that Ferrari cannot seriously challenge for the championship next season unless they put Hamilton front and centre, and he has since doubled down on that position. The reasoning behind it is familiar. Hamilton has seven titles and knows how to manage a championship campaign across a season. A team that commits to one driver can direct set-up work, strategy priority and development feedback towards a single target rather than splitting them between two.

Hill’s own history makes the argument interesting. He won his 1996 title in a Williams alongside Jacques Villeneuve, and that intra-team fight went to the final round. He knows from experience what it is like to race a team-mate for a championship when both have the equipment to win it.

Verstappen’s contribution, reported by Crash.net in response to a skirmish between the two Ferrari drivers, comes from the opposite direction. He said he would never run two number one drivers. That view reflects his career. Red Bull have built their team around him for years, and none of his team-mates has been treated as an equal title candidate. From where he sits, two leaders mean shared resources, lost points and friction that the opposition can exploit.

Both men have a point. Neither fully answers the question Ferrari actually face, which is whether a hierarchy would make them faster.

What McLaren in 2007 and Mercedes in 2014 learned

Formula 1’s recent history offers evidence for both sides, and the details of each case matter.

The strongest argument for a hierarchy is 2007. Hamilton, then a rookie, and Fernando Alonso both finished on 109 points at McLaren, one behind Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari. The two McLaren drivers took points from each other all season. Hamilton was on the losing side of that lesson, and he will remember it.

The counter-example is Mercedes between 2014 and 2016. Hamilton and Nico Rosberg raced on equal terms and collided more than once (including at the start in Spain in 2016), yet Mercedes still won every title available. Equal status was affordable because the car was so far ahead that internal losses never threatened the championship.

Ferrari’s own past shows the price of a hierarchy, and its limits. The Michael Schumacher era was built on an explicit pecking order, and it delivered titles. It also produced the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, where Rubens Barrichello was ordered to cede victory on the final lap, and the public reaction contributed to a ban on team orders. More recently, Ferrari’s 2022 challenge with Leclerc fell apart through reliability failures and strategy errors, not because the team was unsure who was leading it.

The lesson is consistent. A hierarchy matters when two drivers are fighting at the very front and the margin to a rival is fine enough that a few points decide everything. It matters far less when the team itself is not quick enough to be in that position.

The deficit that matters is 142 points

This is where Hill’s argument weakens. Declaring Hamilton the lead driver would redistribute a handful of points within the team over a season. It would not find lap time, and lap time is what separates Ferrari from Mercedes.

Mercedes did not need to declare a number one in 2026. Antonelli is 128 points clear of Russell, and that order emerged from results on track, not from a decision in the team principal’s office. A car that wins regularly gives its fastest driver the space to build a lead, and the hierarchy then establishes itself. Ferrari’s two wins all season are the real problem.

There are also costs to naming a leader in advance. Leclerc has spent his entire Formula 1 career with Ferrari, and he has finished level with or ahead of his team-mates often enough to expect equal treatment. Telling him in November that he will start 2027 as the support driver would ask a great deal of his motivation and of the team’s harmony. Hamilton turns 42 in January. An organisation that commits its season to an older driver before a wheel has turned is taking a bet it does not need to make.

The engineering argument for a single lead driver is sounder than the political one. A team with limited development resources can benefit from a clear direction on set-up preferences. But that is a technical decision about what kind of car Ferrari want to build. It does not require a public ranking of their drivers, and it would be a mistake to treat the two as the same thing.

A trigger, not a decree

Ferrari’s best option sits between Hill’s position and Verstappen’s. They should begin 2027 with both drivers on equal terms and agree in advance on the point at which that changes. The trigger could be a points margin, or a stage of the season by which one driver’s championship is clearly beyond reach. Once that point arrives, the team should commit to the leader without hesitation. Alongside that, Ferrari need firm rules of engagement on track, so that disputes like the one Verstappen commented on are settled by the team before they cost points.

That approach keeps both drivers motivated through the early races, when the order is genuinely unknown. It still gives Ferrari the focus of a single title campaign when it matters. And it avoids the trap of choosing a leader on reputation rather than evidence.

The final three rounds, starting in Las Vegas on 22 November, provide a useful test. Hamilton and Leclerc are separated by 12 points, with third place a point away for Hamilton and Norris three behind Leclerc. Ferrari should let them race for it, and watch closely how they do so. The more important work is happening at the factory. If the 2027 car can close even half of this year’s 142-point gap to Mercedes, the question of a number one will answer itself. If it cannot, no pecking order will rescue Ferrari’s 2027 campaign.