Sainz was annoyed when Ferrari called him into the pits on lap 33, a lap after Esteban Ocon’s Alpine, which he followed throughout the first pit stop.

Despite a slow stop in the Alps, Sainz did not overtake the Frenchman and felt Ferrari should have been more patient as his tires had more speed and he was saved when he got stuck behind the Frenchman .

“What the hell! That’s exactly what I said,” he raged on the radio, and when told the purpose of the pit stop was to cover Lewis Hamilton at the back, he replied: “I don’t care about Hamilton. It’s weak.”

Sainz later expressed remorse for his outburst, saying he “shouldn’t have shown it on the radio” during the game.

“Obviously I was going really fast in the lap and it felt like I had more lap times to get in in the clean air.

“I’ve been doing all this management work. It’s frustrating to come in all of a sudden.”

Team boss Vasseur defended the timing of the pit stop, as the team felt the threat from Hamilton’s Mercedes was too great to leave the Spaniard out.

“I think it was a good strategy because when we pitted him it was to avoid losing position against Hamilton,” Vassell said.

“Position is key on this track. It would have been better if we hadn’t been threatened by Hamilton, but in this case I think it’s a good decision.”

Frederic Vasseur, Ferrari team principal and general manager

Photography: Simon Galloway/ motorsport pictures

Sainz, clearly frustrated with being stuck behind Ocon, made an ambitious overtaking attempt at the chicane that left his front wing damaged, which Vassell described as “a bit upbeat and marginal”.

Ferrari also decided not to extend its initial race time, hoping to cover the likes of race winner Verstappen, as well as Fernando Alonso and George Russell.

“On one stage we had to cover other stages on the track so as not to lose position, redo the race after 5:30 and say ‘well, if you extend the suspension then you can replace when it rains Tires’, it’s always easy,” Vassell added.

“But we didn’t know at this stage that we were in a position of losing position compared to our competitors.”

Ferrari lost for the second time when it rained in the final third of the race. Ocon and the two Mercedes cars of Hamilton and Russell pitted on lap 55 as the rain intensified.

Ferrari opted to run an extra lap on the slick tyres, with Sainz turning at Mirabeau before he and Leclerc made their way carefully through the slippery pool to the pits.

That left Leclerc and Sainz behind Hamilton, and to add insult to injury, the double pile behind Leclerc meant Sainz lost again to Pierre Gasly in the Alps.

The two eventually started from fourth and sixth on the grid and crossed the finish line in sixth and eighth respectively.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23, Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-23

Photography: Zak Mauger / motorsport pictures

Vasseur conceded the call to stay on slicks was a gamble that other teams had taken on the semi-wet track, but trying to reclaim the podium on a track where overtaking was impossible was “worth it”.

“We thought the track wouldn’t be so wet, if you didn’t have to get (the tyres) wet, we would have been on the podium,” the Frenchman explained.

“It was a gamble for us, the stakes weren’t too high because we didn’t lose places. But it is what it is.

“We knew very well in the game that we had to take risks if we wanted to achieve something. I’m not at all disappointed with the risks we took.”