Lewis Hamilton’s radio messages to the Ferrari team were the talk of F1 after last weekend’s Miami Grand Prix.

Hamilton was unable to hide his unhappiness with how the race at the Miami International Autodrome played out, as Ferrari proved indecisive about team orders to its drivers.

What did Lewis Hamilton say over team radio?

Ferrari utilised different tyre strategies for Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton in the Miami Grand Prix, with Leclerc starting the race on the medium compound and Hamilton on the hard.

This meant that, in the second half of the race, Hamilton came up behind Leclerc on the quicker tyre but wasn’t immediately let through to set off in pursuit of Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli.

With Hamilton radioing in to hint at swapping the car’s positions, he said he was “burning up his tyres” behind Leclerc, and said, “So you want me to just sit here [behind Leclerc] the whole race?”

With race engineer Riccardo Adami saying, “I’ll come back to you”, the eventual instruction to “keep DRS to Charles. Go ahead like this”, resulted in Hamilton saying, “Argh… You guys are… This is not good teamwork. That’s all I’m gonna say!”

Clearly stewing in the car, Hamilton then brought up an example of when he had played ball with a Ferrari contra-strategy, “In China, I got out of the way when you were on a different strategy!”

This resulted in Adami saying, “We swap the cars… We swap…” but the hesitation had infuriated Hamilton as he said, “Ah! Have a tea break while you’re at it! Come on!”

With Hamilton’s tyres now past their best, he wasn’t able to catch and pass Antonelli and, towards the end of the race, Leclerc’s proximity meant the Scuderia were eager to swap them back around.

Carlos Sainz was close behind Leclerc and, when the call came, Hamilton sarcastically asked if the team wanted him to “let Sainz through as well”.

Why was Lewis Hamilton so obstreperous?

Hamilton is far from the first World Champion to have been frustrated by the Ferrari pit wall, with Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso in the past also expressing dismay over hesitant or paralysed decision-making.

Examining the radio messages on Sky F1‘s The F1 Show, broadcaster Bernie Collins said there are a number of hypothetical scenarios as to why Hamilton was willing to be so critical over a public medium like team radio.

“The first scenario is that he feels more secure and happier in the team, and everything is going well, and he’s confident enough to say those things without feeling like there’s going to be any comeback on him,” said Collins, a former Force India and Aston Martin chief strategist.

“Scenario two is that maybe he’s not happy with what’s going on and wants to help reform the team. He wants to help Ravin Jain, the head of strategy, to be a bit sharper and interact with his engineer.

“And the third scenario is that maybe Lewis doesn’t care anymore, isn’t happy, and is just happy to criticise them. I don’t think that’s the case but you could put it forward as a reason.”

Hamilton joined Ferrari in a maelstrom of media attention and positivity in January but, aside from a sparkling performance in the Chinese Grand Prix Sprint, it’s been a hard slog for the seven-time F1 World Champion to adjust to Ferrari and its very different car design philosophy.

“It’s the first time that Lewis was on the end, potentially the wrong end, of the famous Ferrari strategy, ‘we’ll get back to you’, that has amused us and infuriated the likes of Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc before,” Sky’s pitlane reporter Ted Kravitz said.

“I think that’s because the strategy department is so compartmentalised at Ferrari from the race engineers.

“You’ve got Ravin Jain, you’ve got his strategy department, and then [Leclerc’s engineer] Brian Bozzi and Riccardo Adami, have to default. They don’t have any autonomy on strategy at all, whereas I think the likes of McLaren’s Will Joseph and Tom Stallard, are always discussing it, they’re much more integrated.

“And why on earth, if they knew that there was a possibility of Lewis starting on the hards and then going to the mediums, they should have seen this in a meeting on Sunday morning and prepared for it.

“I think it’s more separated. I think that’s why he said, ‘you guys’. He’s saying: ‘You strategy guys, in your little bunker there, where it takes 10 minutes for anything to get through to you, hurry up, get on it!’”

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Martin Brundle: Radio messages show how upset Lewis Hamilton is

With Hamilton aiming for the fairytale story of a record-breaking eighth world title with the sport’s most historic team, the reality is that the Scuderia appears to have taken a step backward in relative competitiveness compared to last season.

Having ended 2024 with perhaps the outright fastest car, the change in design direction over the winter now has Ferrari vying for fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship after the first quarter of the season and neither Hamilton nor Leclerc have ever looked in contention for a race victory with only one podium from 12 race starts.

The disappointment of this new reality, Brundle believes, could be why Hamilton was so sarcastic.

“I think it’s quite telling, the sarcasm of the messages, and how upset Lewis is,” he said.

“He’d have been really frustrated in that race, 23 laps behind Esteban Ocon in the customer Ferrari with 300 people in the factory. Trying to get past Ocon’s Haas, that’s not where Lewis expected to be this year, so I’d imagine his mood wasn’t too good.”

But the drop-off in competitiveness shouldn’t have Ferrari reaching for the reset button once again, with Fred Vasseur settling into his job as team boss in his third season with the squad.

“Of course, they’re going to be super unhappy at Ferrari. They expect to be contenders for the championship, especially with a line-up of Leclerc and Hamilton,” he said.

“What they mustn’t do is behave like a football team and fire the manager, fire everybody, and change for the sake of change. That won’t improve anything at all. We have seen teams make that mistake.

“They were the fifth-fastest team, and that’s really a big issue. They’ve got to understand that. If they could change the car, they would, if they knew what to do with it. There will be some heavy conversations at Ferrari, there has to be.”

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