Lewis Hamilton aired his frustrations with the lack of effective communication yet again with the Ferrari pit wall, stating that information provided to him "wasn't exactly that clear".
It was a lonely race for the seven-time World Champion; despite finishing in a respectable fifth position he was almost a minute behind nearest driver Max Verstappen at the chequered flag.
The race was one by Lando Norris of McLaren, while Hamilton's teammate Charles Leclerc claimed second place with the other McLaren of Oscar Piastri in P3.
The Ferrari driver did well to gain places from his starting grid position of seventh, jumping Fernando Alonso and Isack Hadjar after the first pitstop phase.
During the 78-lap event, Hamilton asked his race engineer, Riccardo Adami, for targets to try and close the gap to those ahead of him.
In response, Adami replied: "Push now. This is our race."
However, Hamilton misinterpreted this message as meaning he had a chance to get ahead of Verstappen if he pushed hard enough. In reality, the gap was already too big to mount a challenge to the Red Bull ahead.
In fact, Hamilton was worried that the communication mishap had angered Adami, and said at the end of the Grand Prix: "Are you upset with me or something?" No reply was subsequently heard.
Speaking after the race, Hamilton didn't hide his disappointment with the communications he received behind the wheel.
He said: "It wasn’t very clear. The information wasn’t exactly that clear.
"I didn’t fully understand ‘this is our race’. I didn’t know what I was fighting for. Was I fighting for the next spot ahead?
"But in actual fact when I looked at the data I was nowhere near any of the guys up front. I used up my tyres a lot in that moment but I was so far away from them anyway," added Hamilton.
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On the rest of the race, Hamilton was downbeat: "I can’t comment on the rest of the race. For me I was kind of in the middle of nowhere. With the penalty that I had I started seventh.
"I was obviously behind two cars for some time and managed to clear them. I was just in no man’s land after that. The gap was relatively big and I was really not racing them. I needed a Safety Car to come into play but it didn’t happen. It was pretty straight forward from there."
Ferrari Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur shut down any ideas of growing tensions between Hamilton and Adami.
He stated to media: "When the driver is asking something between Turn 1 and Turn 3 we have to wait to reply to avoid to speak during the corners.
"It’s not that we are sleeping, it’s not that we are having a beer on the pit wall. It’s just because we have a section of the track where we agreed before to speak with the drivers.
Vasseur concluded by claiming that Hamilton didn't seem to be in a negative mood after the race.
The Ferrari boss added: "Honestly it’s not a tension that a guy is asking something. He is between the walls, he is under pressure, he’s at 300kph between the walls and I am perfectly fine with it.
"When I spoke to him after the race he was not upset."
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