Rosberg: Ferrari cannot prioritise Hamilton over Leclerc in 2026 title fight

Monza, Italy – September 5, 2026. I arrived at the end of the pit lane after the last engine of qualifying had fallen silent. Nico Rosberg had just left the Sky Sports F1 commentary position, but his words were still in my ears: “Of course, it costs them performance, and Lewis championship points eventually, but the team cannot do that at this stage against Leclerc. It’s not feasible.”

Rosberg was not talking about a floor upgrade or a rear-wing angle. He was talking about the hardest thing to measure in Formula 1: the internal order of a team. His remark came after a chaotic Dutch Grand Prix, where Ferrari appeared reluctant to enforce team orders to let Lewis Hamilton pass Charles Leclerc, even though the Monegasque was on a different strategy. To me, that was more than a pundit’s soundbite. It was a warning about how the Scuderia should – and should not – manage the 2026 title fight.

I start with junior-team data; every number is a drumbeat before the start. Before trusting Rosberg’s words, I placed three sources side by side: the current standings, the Dutch GP events, and the former world champion’s live remarks. All led to the same data: Hamilton is 59 points behind the leader, Leclerc is 87 points behind. Ferrari’s two drivers are not only close in the classification; they are, as Rosberg put it, “two No. 1 drivers, both on a similar level.”

In F1, a team with two equally strong drivers is often described as having a nice problem. Rosberg sees a trap. If Ferrari makes Hamilton the centre of the rest of the season, the team will have to adjust everything from pit-stop priority to tyre-management procedures to car-development philosophy. Leclerc is not a No. 2 driver. He will lose points, the team will lose points, and a car designed to be balanced for both will become less efficient. Rosberg said it plainly: “You cannot, now in the middle of the season, put everything just working towards Lewis. It’s way too early, and that doesn’t make sense.”

Looking back at the last five races, Rosberg’s comment carries weight. He described the two Ferraris as being “all over each other almost every race.” That suggests the car is good enough for both drivers to extract near-maximum performance. There is no major mechanical weakness, no clearly slower driver. But that balance creates risk: every time they brake alongside each other, every time they fight for a tenth of a second, Ferrari could lose both cars instead of one.

At Monza, Hamilton qualified only fourth, below the team’s expectations. Yet Rosberg still said Hamilton has “a good race car” and can reach the podium. That is an important signal: Ferrari’s technical package is not bad. The problem is not speed but whether the team dares to let its two drivers race freely all season. If they do not, Rosberg suggests, the price may be higher than the benefit Hamilton receives.

At this stage of the 2026 season, the more Ferrari imposes an internal order, the more the combined performance of both cars drops. That is the difference between a team with a clear No. 1 driver and one with two drivers of similar standing. When you have a clear No. 1, sacrificing the second driver is simple arithmetic: add points to the leader, subtract points from rivals. But when the two drivers are equal, team orders do not simply transfer points from one to the other. They disrupt the entire operating rhythm of the team.

Data is never impatient; it waits for me to read it carefully before I trust emotion. The emotion in the Monza paddock wants Ferrari to choose a driver now. Hamilton has seven titles, enormous commercial value, and trails the championship leader by 28 fewer points than Leclerc. From the outside, that is a perfect reason to prioritise Hamilton immediately. But Rosberg, who lived inside Mercedes’ disciplined environment, knows one thing well: F1 awards constructors’ points, and a team torn apart by civil war loses more than one protected driver gains.

There is a common misunderstanding that Rosberg is defending Leclerc or opposing Hamilton. I think the opposite. He is protecting Hamilton from a decision made too early. If Ferrari prioritises Hamilton right now, the team will have to change its operating methods in the middle of a development cycle. If Hamilton does not turn that advantage into a title, the team has lost Leclerc for nothing. If Leclerc responds by refusing to cooperate, Ferrari will enter the spiral they avoided in the Netherlands.

The Dutch GP is an example. Ferrari did not force Leclerc to let Hamilton pass despite their different strategies. That decision may have cost Hamilton points, but it kept Leclerc from feeling like a supporting driver. Rosberg is saying that lesson applies not only to Zandvoort but also to the rest of the 2026 season. If Ferrari feels compelled to choose, they will break the balance that currently gives them two spearheads.

What stood out to me was Rosberg’s use of the word “feasible.” That is not the language of a technical analyst talking about ignition timing or tyre pressures. It is the language of someone who has sat in the cockpit and understands that, mid-season, everything in a racing team is connected. Changing driver priority is not just changing a line on a strategy sheet. It changes how the engineers work on each car, how the pit crew reacts, and how the two sides of the garage see each other.

I also noticed that Rosberg mentioned Lando Norris and George Russell as part of the “big race for the championship” at Monza. Ferrari is not only racing itself. They are racing Mercedes, McLaren, and others ready to exploit any internal error. If Ferrari pours all resources into Hamilton and Hamilton does not win the title, Leclerc will leave or stay with a crack that cannot be welded. If they pour everything into Leclerc and Leclerc also fails, Hamilton will question his future. Rosberg is trying to pull Ferrari away from that trap.

Many people in the paddock think the team should bet on whichever driver is closer to the title. But Rosberg points out that 59 points versus 87 points is not a big enough gap to justify breaking team structure. The season is still long. There are still many variables. If Hamilton is truly faster, he will create the gap himself. If Leclerc is truly slower, he will drop back naturally. The team does not need to intervene now to do what time can do on its own.

Another crucial detail Rosberg offered: the two Ferrari drivers are “on a similar level.” If that is true, Ferrari has a weapon many teams dream of: two drivers capable of scoring maximum points. But that weapon works only when the team accepts letting them race within a clear framework. That framework must not be absolute priority for one; it has to be controlled fairness – fairness until one man genuinely proves superior.

Rosberg was Hamilton’s team-mate at Mercedes and won the 2026 title inside an intensely pressured environment. So when he says Ferrari “cannot do that at this stage,” I hear someone who paid with his career to learn that boundary. At Mercedes, the internal fight between him and Hamilton produced incredible moments but also pushed the team to the edge. Ferrari now faces a similar situation, and Rosberg is showing them the exit.

The exit is not choosing Leclerc over Hamilton. The exit is choosing no one – at least until the championship reaches its decisive phase. Rosberg is not saying Hamilton is not worth prioritising. He is saying the time has not yet come. If Ferrari prioritises Hamilton too early, they turn Leclerc into a potential saboteur rather than a team-mate. But if they prioritise Hamilton at the right moment – when only a few races remain and the points gap is clear – Leclerc will understand it is a rational decision, not an insult.

In the end, I write not to say who is right or wrong. I write to record a moment when a former world champion tells a team not to shoot itself in the foot. Monza may end with a Ferrari victory or defeat. But the more important thing is how the team handles the Hamilton-Leclerc relationship in the coming months. If they keep the balance, the 2026 title race still means everything. If they break it, Rosberg may repeat this sentence at season’s end with a sad smile.

I keep the rhythm; the team finds someone who knows how to listen. At Monza, Ferrari’s rhythm has not broken yet. The question is whether they have enough calmness to hold that rhythm to Abu Dhabi.