F1 responds after Ferrari brands Lewis Hamilton radio broadcast a “joke”

F1 have already held talks with Ferrari over the radio message broadcast which angered the team.

Ferrari accused F1 of a deliberate attempt to stir up drama surrounding a driver swap involving Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc in Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix.

Struggling to keep pace with the frontrunners and aware he was holding up Leclerc behind, Hamilton informed Ferrari he was considering letting his teammate through in a radio message which was not broadcast.

“I think I’m going to let Charles go, because I’m struggling,” the seven-time world champion radioed in to Ferrari.

The swap did not happen immediately and Hamilton was told “we are swapping cars” at Turn 14, to which he responded “when he’s closer, yes.”

Hamilton appeared to change his mind about the swap briefly when he thought he was catching Mercedes’ George Russell.

The 40-year-old Briton then replied “I’ll tell you when we can swap” when another request came from race engineer Riccardo Adami to wave Leclerc by at Turn 14.

Hamilton eventually moved aside two corners later at Turn 1 on Lap 21.

Ferrari were unhappy that only select radio messages were broadcast and delayed, which gave the impression that Hamilton was disgruntled and disobeying a team order.

Team principal Fred Vasseur labelled the select broadcasting of team radio messages a “joke” and felt it had created a false narrative.

F1 have now commented on the matter, insisting the decision to only play certain messages was not an "intentional” attempt to mislead.

“There was absolutely no intention of presenting a misleading narrative regarding the Ferrari team radio,” an F1 spokesperson told Crash.net.

“Due to other situations developing during the race the message from Lewis was not played but this was not intentional.”

What made Ferrari so unhappy

“I think this is a joke from FOM because the first call came from Lewis,” Vasseur said in Shanghai.

"Lewis asked us to swap, but to create the mess around the situation they broadcast only the second part of the question. We will discuss with them.

"You can't imagine the number of questions I had about this when I came from the garage to here," he said. "It's all about the same thing: 'Is it a mess?' I said no, it's Lewis who asked to swap.

"I'm not even sure you would even have these situations ten times at other teams in a season, and honestly from the pit wall we really appreciated the call from Lewis saying, 'guys, I'm losing the pace, I'm keen to swap’.

"It took us one lap to ask him to swap with Charles and then the pace was back. He said 'oh let's stay like this for a little bit' and we said 'no, if you up the pace we swap’.

"As a team the collaboration between the two guys is mega and I can't complain a single second about something.

“I understand the question, but you have to ask the question to Stefano [Domenicali, F1 president and CEO] and not me because I'm not in charge of the broadcast.”