Starting from disappointing 12th on the grid, Lewis Hamilton made the most of a Virtual Safety Car by pitting early, which helped him move into the top 10. Once on the medium tyres, he showed impressive speed and soon caught up to his teammate Charles Leclerc, who was running in seventh place.

At that point, Hamilton clearly felt he was faster and began to question the team over the radio. “How far are people ahead of Charles? I’m just burning up my tyres behind him,” he said. His engineer replied, “Antonelli is 6 seconds ahead of Charles.”

When Hamilton asked, “So you want me to just sit here the whole race?” he was met with, “I’ll come back to you.” Ferrari told him to hold position and use Leclerc’s DRS, which didn’t sit well with the Brit. “This is not good teamwork. That’s all I’m gonna say!” he replied.

The back-and-forth continued for several laps. Hamilton reminded the team, “In China I got out of the way when you were on a different strategy!” Eventually, Ferrari gave the order to swap. Hamilton responded sarcastically, “Ah! Have a tea break while you’re at it! Come on!”

After finally getting past Leclerc, Hamilton tried to close the gap to Antonelli ahead, but by then his tyres were already worn out. “Well now I’ve used all my tyres!” he said.

Despite pushing, Leclerc stayed close behind, and Ferrari later decided to reverse the positions again. Hamilton wasn’t pleased: “So you don’t think I can catch up or what?” he asked. “Yes,” came the short reply. The team told Leclerc before Hamilton, and the message came too late, so the swap didn’t happen until the next lap.

Towards the end, Hamilton came under pressure from Carlos Sainz. “Sainz 1.4 behind,” said the team. Hamilton fired back, “You want me to let him past as well?” Sainz made a lunge on the final lap and made contact, but Hamilton managed to hold on and finish eighth.

After the race, Hamilton said the radio messages weren’t as bad as they sounded, but the whole situation showed how tricky things are getting inside the Ferrari garage this season.

"I lost a lot of time behind Charles and in that moment for sure I was like, come on let's make a concise decision really quick, let's not waste time," he told Sky Sports F1.

"I'm sure people didn't like certain comments but you've got to understand it was frustrating, people say way worse things than what I say. It was more sarcastic than anything and I'm not frustrated now. We'll work internally, we'll have discussions and we'll keep pushing."

He added: "Let's not get emotional about it. We're here to race, we're not where we want to be."