"I would be surprised": Why Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari didn't make sense to Bernie Ecclestone

Bernie Ecclestone did not think a Lewis Hamilton to Ferrari move made any sense for either party.

In the last few days, Italian publications have been filled with speculation about a possible move from Mercedes to the Italian squad from the F1 legend. Conflicting reports had emerged with some of them stating that there had been an approach from the Scuderia for Lewis Hamilton while others stated otherwise.

In all of this though, former F1 supremo cast doubt on the entire rumor mill as he felt that Ferrari had too much affinity for Charles Leclerc to let him go. At the same time, Lewis Hamilton would have ended up having far more questions than answer about Leclerc leaving Ferrari and that could have dissuaded him as well.

Talking to the media about this, Bernie said:

"I would be surprised that Ferrari would want to get rid of Leclerc to sign Lewis because they are very much in love with Leclerc. Lewis has said that when he does decide to stop he would still want to be connected with Mercedes so it would surprise me if he wanted to leave."

"And if I was Lewis and I saw that Leclerc is happy to leave Ferrari, I would think there has to be a problem there."

He added:

“I also don’t know why Lewis would think he would be better off at Ferrari than where he is at the moment. He knows everything well and truly at Mercedes. They know him, and they have a lot of respect for him so he couldn’t be better looked after anywhere.”

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Ferrari refutes claims that they approached Lewis Hamilton

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur too has called out 'fake news' as he revealed there was no approach from the Italian team to Lewis Hamilton. He said:

“As a joke I could say that two weeks ago you were sending [Carlos] Sainz to Audi, one week ago you sent [Charles] Leclerc to Mercedes – now I am alone."

"You know perfectly that at this stage of the season each week you will have a different story and we are not sending an offer to Lewis Hamilton, we didn’t do it. We didn’t have discussions. I think every single team on the grid would like to have Hamilton at one stage, it would be bull**** to not say something like this."

With far too many rumors going around and the future of the Mercedes driver not settled, all of this is getting dragged along quite a bit and it needs to be seen when the resolution for the contract extension is reached.