Fred Vasseur insists he understands Lewis Hamilton’s “frustration”, after all, no driver in his history as a team principal ever said “I’m pleased to let you go [ahead]” to a team-mate.

Ferrari used team orders not once but twice in Sunday’s Miami Grand Prix, initially telling Charles Leclerc to let Hamilton through before swapping back.

Fred Vasseur: I can perfectly understand the frustration

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Blackstock

Hamilton was not happy, telling his race engineer Riccardo Adami that it was “not great team work”.

And when he was finally told that Ferrari would swap the positions, he fired back: “Ah, have a tea break while you’re at it!”

But unable to catch Kimi Antonelli for sixth place, Hamilton was told to give the position back to Leclerc. That put Carlos Sainz on his rear wing, the Briton chirping: “You want me to let him pass as well?”

The team-mates finished seventh and eighth with Leclerc again getting the better of Hamilton in a Grand Prix.

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Hamilton revealed Vasseur came to speak with him, at which time he downplayed any suggestion of tension.

“Fred came to my room,” Hamilton revealed. “I just put my hand on his shoulder and was like, ‘dude, calm down, don’t be so sensitive’.

“I could have said way worse things on the radio. You hear some of the things others have said in the past, some of it was sarcasm.”

From his side, the Ferrari team principal completely understood Hamilton’s frustration in the moment, but sometimes Ferrari have to make the tough calls.

And this one, swapping back if the driver cannot catch the car ahead, is actually team policy.

“I had a discussion with Lewis and I can perfectly understand the frustration,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com. “They are champions, they want to win races. We are asking them to let the team go. It’s not easy. It’s never easy. And I didn’t see another team to do it today.

“That’s why we took the responsibility to do it. Because it’s the policy to the team. We are racing for Ferrari first and honestly I think as a team we did a good job.

“Again, you can argue that it would have been better to do it half a lap before or half a lap later. But when you are in the pit wall and you have to understand if the car behind is faster than the car in front, just for DRS or not, it’s not an easy call.

“It’s always much easier to do it two hours later. We asked them to do it, they did it.

“Now the frustration when you are in the car, I can perfectly understand this. And we had a discussion and it was much more relaxed.

“It’s not the story of the day. We did 6-7, instead of 7-6 or 6-7 or 7-6. I would be much more keen to speak about why we finished one minute behind McLaren.”

The long-time team principal, who co-founded ART Grand Prix back in 2004 before making his way into Formula 1, says team orders are frustrating for all drivers as he’s never heard one tell him that he’s okay with it.

“What’s happened today is absolutely not an issue for me,” he added. “I can perfectly understand their frustration when we’re asking something like this,”

“I never saw in my life, and trust me that I had to ask this kind of situation a couple of times in my life, I never saw someone say ‘okay, you can go, it’s not an issue, I’m pleased to let you go’.

“It’s frustrating because there are the feelings that they gave up a position.

“But for the benefit of the team, that sometimes it’s working, sometimes not, but we need to use the same goal, and they are perfectly aligned with us.”

With his radio messages to Adami broadcast to the world, Hamilton was questioned about his testy comments when he faced the media after the Grand Prix.

His words then were of little concern to Vasseur who stands by the decisions made in Miami.

To him, the only important thing is that everyone walks away still trusting one another to do what is best for Ferrari.

“My concern is not that he has to speak with TV, it’s that we need to be clear between us,” Vasseur said. “He has to understand what was my feeling, that he can trust me, I can trust him and the same with Charles.

“And when I have to take a decision, a decision for Ferrari, there’s the element that you are live. It’s not that you have 30 minutes. You have a look at the data, you have to decide who is the fastest on track, if it’s coming from the DRS or not.

“Perhaps it was a bit slow, but it took one lap or one and a half to make a decision.

“It’s always when you are behind you have to think that you have to swap in the next corner and when you are in front, it’s not the DRS at all.”

Hamilton finished the Grand Prix in eighth place and left Miami having scored 10 points in total. He, however, remains P7 in the Drivers’ standings where he trails Oscar Piastri by 90 points.

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