Ferrari Team Principal Fred Vasseur allegedly had to intervene on the team radio after Lewis Hamilton shunted his SF-26 during the final practice session for the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix.
Hamilton endured a largely incident-ridden maiden Spanish GP at the Madring circuit last weekend.
The Ferrari driver had incurred damage to his SF-26 after a meeting with the barriers during FP3 on Saturday.
But despite his race engineer, Carlo Santi, asking him to park up his car on track, Hamilton was adamant that he could drive it back into the pits.
The Briton was asked as many as five times by the Italian engineer to abandon any attempts to drive the car in fear of attracting a penalty from the stewards for unsafe driving.
And when his advice fell on deaf ears, Vasseur reportedly intervened by using a private radio channel to essentially tell Hamilton that “enough is enough”.
F1 journalist Jacky Martens relayed the radio conversation, which was otherwise not broadcast.
“At some point, we saw that he stopped that car on track,” he told the Paddock Access podcast.
“From what I’ve heard, Fred Vasseur, the Team Principal, went on the radio and said, ‘You stop that car right now.’
“We didn’t hear it on the live [broadcast]. He did it in the end when Fred Vasseur intervened. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have done it, because he wasn’t listening to his engineer.
“Fred Vasseur, all of a sudden, was like, ‘Enough is enough.’ But those TPs have a button, they can choose not to broadcast that. We haven’t heard any of that.
“I think there are certain rules with that. You can’t block everything.”
F1 commentators were left bewildered by Lewis Hamilton’s F1 Spanish GP actions
If FP3 was a tricky affair for Hamilton, the 53-lap race on Sunday was one to forget altogether.
The seven-time World Champion was forced to retire after persistent brake issues left him in no shape to compete in the Spanish GP.
But much like FP3, Hamilton was adamant that he could have driven through the issue before admitting that he could ‘barely stop the car’ and finally diving into the pits on Lap 7.
This left F1TV commentator David Coulthard questioning Hamilton’s insistence about staying out on track.
“He’s got a flat-spot,” Coulthard had observed. “You can see it clearly on the front right. He doesn’t make that many mistakes. That car is not functioning normally.
“Then… why drive past the pit lane? It’s the first time here [at the Madring], so maybe he forgot.”
Channel 4’s Billy Monger said he got “uncomfortable” watching Hamilton staying out on the street-circuit with no brakes, after the race.
“It felt like he almost stayed out a couple of laps too long,” he said.
“I was getting a bit uncomfortable watching it, thinking, if you’ve got a brake failure and you’re staying out on the race track, this could end in tears here.”
Hamilton’s retirement from the Spanish GP has dealt him a fatal blow in his bid for an unprecedented eighth F1 World Championship this season.
READ MORE – Motorsport Week’s 2026 F1 Spanish GP Driver Ratings
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