Jenson Button watched the same radio exchange as everyone else and reached a very different conclusion to his Sky Sports colleague.

Where Schiff saw a breakdown, Button saw a driver backing his own instinct over the pit wall.

“I think he just wanted to make his call on the race, and he thought it was the right one,” Button said on Sky Sports F1’s post-race coverage.

“He didn’t want to be sat behind his teammate for the rest of the race, basically. He wanted to give it a go, and he knew his pace was there when he was on the soft tyre.”

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Schiff ties Singapore to Ferrari’s previous strategy call

Schiff’s reading went further than Singapore. She tied Hamilton’s defiance to Ferrari’s muddled call at the previous round and framed it as a trust problem running in both directions.

“I’m not that surprised, I think they’ve sort of lost trust with each other on making the right decisions in certain circumstances,” she told Sky Sports F1 viewers.

“Do you blame Lewis today? Yes maybe he made the wrong call. But do you blame the team last week? Yes, they made the wrong call then. So I understand why Lewis is challenging them because he’s not always confident that they are going to make the right decision.”

What actually happened at Marina Bay

Hamilton was running third at the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix on 11 October when Ferrari called both of its cars in under a Virtual Safety Car. Charles Leclerc pitted. Hamilton did not. By the flag he had slid to sixth, swallowed up by three cars on fresher rubber.

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Fred Vasseur, who remains Ferrari’s team principal, described the instruction to the drivers as unambiguous.

“We called him, we called them both to pit. It was crystal clear on the radio,” Vasseur said.

Hamilton himself did not fight the verdict. On team radio he told his engineers: “Sorry boys. I let you down today with that strategy. My call, and I lost us valuable points.”

In a follow-up written statement he called it “a painful lesson.”

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Vasseur: ‘crystal clear on the radio’

Schiff reads a driver who has stopped waiting for his team to get the big calls right. Button reads one who thought he had a soft-tyre advantage and chose to use it. Vasseur’s version is that the message was clear and ignored, while Hamilton’s own statement adds that he missed the pit entry before deciding to stay out.

Hamilton’s next chance to put the issue to rest on track comes at the United States Grand Prix in Austin on 25 October.

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