Ferrari drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc admitted to cheating when playing chess against each other at the Bahrain Fan Zone on Saturday, ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday.
Since Hamilton, a seven-time World Champion with McLaren and Mercedes arrived at Ferrari, Leclerc and him have indulged in playing online chess at different events, be it the F1 75 event, or on plane rides together to their next race country. On Saturday, Hamilton spoke about how both were playing chess against each other and towards the end of the day, the scores were tied at 4-4.
Hamilton then said that it didn’t feel right that they go to sleep with the scores tied so ended up playing a decider. It was then that the British driver admitted to cheating against Leclerc and said, “The moves that he was making were so good. I thought maybe I’ll go online and find ‘suggestions’ on what to do next. I found this website that predicted what move I should play next. I used it for one move and his moves were so good coming back. He then went, ‘Wait a second, are we both cheating?’”
Despite starting to cheat at exactly the same point, Leclerc admitted he lost the game. “The worst thing is that my bot – the program that I was using – was worse than his, so I was cheating, and I still lost. I went to sleep so depressed.”
Both Hamilton and Leclerc made Q3 of the qualification for the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Leclerc taking the third position for the race on Sunday and Hamilton taking the ninth spot. Ferrari have had a tough start to the season, with McLaren clearly possessing the better car but Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and both the Mercedes’ have also shown that they are ahead of the Italian team as of now.
