Seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton was clearly confused during the Canadian Grand Prix’s post-race press conference, following a Kimi Raikkonen joke.
Hamilton enjoyed an excellent race at the Circuit de Gilles-Villeneuve to claim third, marking back-to-back podiums for the Mercedes driver.
He was involved in a great fight with Fernando Alonso throughout almost the entire race; however, the Spaniard did get the better of the 38-year-old.
Hamilton was starting to close Alonso down with 10 laps to go, something Aston Martin warned the Spaniard about.
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Alonso insisted that the Silverstone-based team simply “leave it to me”, something they did.
“Hamilton is 1.9 seconds behind. 1.9 behind,” Alonso was informed by his race engineer.
“Copy, leave it to me,” replied the Spaniard.
After the race, reporters recognised the similarity between Alonso’s comments to that of 2007 World Champion Raikkonen.
The popular Finn famously told Lotus over the team radio at the 2012 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to “just leave me alone, I know what I’m doing!” whilst he drove to victory.
Hamilton was asked about Alonso’s comments to see if he’d gauge the Raikkonen reference, where the Briton noted that Alonso “knows what he’s doing”.
“What the engineer said to him, that you were catching, you were under two seconds and then Fernando said ‘copy, leave it to me’. ‘Leave it to me’,” Hamilton was asked.
“I don’t get what the point is. He’s a multi-World Champion so he knows what he’s doing,” answered a clearly confused Hamilton.
“Is this like a joke?” the reporter replied.
“Ahh… I don’t get it,” replied Hamilton, whilst laughing.
Hamilton went on to express how much of a “privilege” it was to join Alonso and race winner Max Verstappen on the podium, with the trio having 11 titles between them.
The Mercedes driver is hopeful that last Sunday won’t be the final time this season that he’s able to battle with Alonso and be close to Verstappen, with Hamilton believing that the racing will be “much more exciting” if the trio are near each other.
“It’s a privilege to be up here fighting these two who’ve done incredible in their careers,” said Hamilton.
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“And this is quite an iconic top three. I don’t know if there’s been a top three like this ever before. I don’t believe there has.
“But yeah, so hopefully there’ll be more and hopefully, as Fernando said, there’s a lot of respect between us as we were able to race so closely and trust in one another.
“I’m really hoping at some stage we have more of a level playing field in our cars, and then we’ll have a much more exciting race, I think in the future.”