Ted Kravitz believes Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur may have been particularly irritated by Lewis Hamilton’s decision to express his frustration with Charles Leclerc over team radio during the 2026 Mexico City Grand Prix. The Sky Sports F1 reporter suggested that Vasseur would have preferred the disagreement between his two drivers to remain an internal matter rather than become a public controversy.
The tension followed an opening-lap confrontation that cost Lewis Hamilton the race lead and left him questioning both his team-mate’s actions and the stewards’ subsequent decision. Although Ted Kravitz acknowledged that the seven-time world champion had legitimate reasons to be frustrated, he suspected that the public nature of Hamilton’s complaints would not have been appreciated by the Ferrari boss.
Why Ted Kravitz believes Fred Vasseur was annoyed by Lewis Hamilton’s radio messages
During the red-flag interruption in Mexico, television cameras showed Fred Vasseur speaking with Lewis Hamilton’s race engineer, Carlo Santi. Watching the exchange, Ted Kravitz offered his interpretation of what the Ferrari team principal might have been discussing.
The Sky Sports F1 reporter speculated that Vasseur could have been asking Carlo Santi to prevent Hamilton from continuing to broadcast Ferrari’s internal disagreements over the radio. Drawing on his familiarity with the French team principal, Kravitz suggested that Vasseur would find such public criticism extremely irritating.
In Kravitz’s view, the Ferrari boss would want the details of the dispute between his drivers handled privately, regardless of whether Hamilton had a valid complaint about the incident itself.
The distinction was important to the reporter’s assessment. He did not dismiss the British driver’s frustration, but believed that repeatedly discussing the internal battle over an open radio channel was unlikely to sit comfortably with Vasseur.
The episode added another dimension to the pressure facing Ferrari management following the race, with Lewis Hamilton subsequently calling for serious internal discussions about the confrontation.
Lewis Hamilton’s frustration began with Charles Leclerc’s opening-lap attack
The disagreement developed almost immediately after the start of the Mexico City Grand Prix. Having secured pole position, Lewis Hamilton initially led the field, but Charles Leclerc quickly became a threat after overtaking Mercedes driver George Russell on the approach to Turn 1.
The Monegasque then attempted to pass his Ferrari team-mate around the outside of Turn 4. Both drivers left the circuit during the manoeuvre, allowing Max Verstappen to move ahead of Hamilton and take second place.
Hamilton immediately complained over the radio that his own team-mate had forced him off the track. As the stewards examined the incident, the seven-time world champion continued asking for clarification about what would happen to Leclerc.
The officials eventually imposed a five-second penalty on the Monegasque for leaving the track and gaining an advantage. Although the infringement would ordinarily have resulted in a ten-second sanction, the penalty was reduced because of mitigating circumstances.
The stewards took into account that the incident occurred on the opening lap and that Hamilton had also run wide. Those considerations were central to the decision to impose a five-second penalty rather than ten seconds.
For Hamilton, however, the punishment did little to address the competitive consequences. He had already fallen to third behind Verstappen, while Leclerc was benefiting from running in clean air.
Lewis Hamilton questions the penalty and Ferrari’s pre-race agreement
When informed of the stewards’ verdict, Hamilton argued that the five-second penalty did not adequately compensate for the advantage his team-mate had gained.
His frustration intensified as he suggested over the radio that the officials were effectively helping Charles Leclerc towards victory. He also referred to an agreement reached during the drivers’ briefing, indicating that he believed the situation should have been handled differently.
Before the Grand Prix, the FIA race director had warned competitors that failing to return positions promptly after leaving the circuit at either of the opening two chicanes would attract severe punishment.
Hamilton’s comments therefore reflected his dissatisfaction not only with the incident but also with how the relevant instructions had been applied.
After the race, the British driver explained that Ferrari would hold its serious conversations privately. Nevertheless, Ted Kravitz suspected that the earlier radio exchanges may already have caused frustration within the team.
Damon Hill questions whether Lewis Hamilton’s protests helped Ferrari
Former Formula 1 world champion Damon Hill also questioned Hamilton’s approach, although his criticism focused more directly on the sporting consequences of requesting a penalty against his team-mate.
Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, Hill suggested that Ferrari would be unhappy about Hamilton encouraging the stewards to investigate Charles Leclerc’s manoeuvre. He reasoned that penalising the Monegasque could ultimately benefit Max Verstappen by putting the Red Bull driver at the front of the race.
Hill also considered Hamilton’s continued protests unlikely to achieve anything once the officials had reached their decision.
In his assessment, the British driver was emphasising why he had lost position, but further complaints to Ferrari would not persuade the stewards to reconsider their verdict. Hill maintained that Hamilton still had opportunities to improve his result and was not completely out of contention.
His interpretation contrasted with the emotional reaction coming from the Ferrari cockpit, where Hamilton remained convinced that the opening-lap incident had significantly compromised his chances.
Ferrari’s Mexico GP battle continues after red-flag restart
The race subsequently developed in a way that demonstrated why the early confrontation had been so consequential.
Charles Leclerc lost the lead to Max Verstappen when the two drivers made their pit stops, with the Ferrari driver also serving his five-second penalty.
Following the later red-flag stoppage, Hamilton moved back ahead of his team-mate at the restart. Leclerc slipped to fourth as Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli also passed him, before the Monegasque mounted a determined defence against McLaren’s Lando Norris.
Despite the earlier setback, Hamilton continued to believe that Ferrari had possessed the performance necessary to win the Grand Prix.
That conviction helps explain the intensity of his radio messages, but it also illustrates the difficulty facing Fred Vasseur when both drivers are competing for the same result.
For Ted Kravitz, the central concern was not simply whether Hamilton had grounds to complain. It was whether Ferrari’s internal disagreements should have been discussed so openly during the race, particularly when the team principal would have preferred to manage the situation behind closed doors.
The controversy has therefore left Ferrari confronting two connected questions: how to handle its drivers when they fight directly on track, and how to prevent those disagreements from becoming an additional distraction during a Grand Prix.
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