Lewis Hamilton's growing frustration with Ferrari finally boils over in a series of feisty radio exchanges.
If nothing else, the seven time world champion has educated the Maranello outfit in the art of sarcasm, as the Italian team seeks to play down first signs of a rift.
The various issues with the car are one thing, but when confronted with the Italian team's manana approach to strategy it was all too much for the Briton.
While his teammate started on mediums, Hamilton had opted for hards, and having made his sole stop two laps later than Charles Leclerc, the Briton, now on the yellow-banded rubber, was lapping faster than his teammate who had switched to hards.
"I'm just burning up my tyres behind him," said Hamilton. "You want me to just sit here the whole race?"
"We'll come back to you," he was told by his engineer, Riccardo Adami.
This, to an F1 driver, during a race, is the equivalent of being told: "You're call is important to us, please hold, you are number two in the queue!" Indeed, all that was missing was the obligatory demand that staff be treated with respect and kindness... or else!
Eventually, Adami replied: "We want to keep the DRS to Charles, go ahead like this. Carlos behind 1.5."
"Ugh, you guys!" sighed Hamilton.
A couple of laps later the Briton is given the all-clear to pass his teammate, though it takes Leclerc some time to yield.
"This is not good teamwork, that's all I'm going to say," says Hamilton. "In China, I got out the way!"
"We swapped the cars," says Adami.
"Have a tea break while you're at it," suggests the Briton, "come on!"
Now past his teammate, his tyres are past their best, and unable to make a dent on the gap to Kimi Antonelli ahead, Hamilton is unable to shake off Leclerc behind.
"I need Lewis to go faster," urges Leclerc. "I've just got dirty air now."
Almost ten laps later nothing has changed. "Are we coming back on Antonelli?" ask Leclerc.
"We are... quite slowly," he is told. "Could you go quicker?"
"I have no idea," he replies. "I am now overheating."
By now Hamilton is 2.4s down on Antonelli and Ferrari feels that Leclerc might have a better chance of catching the Mercedes.
"We are going to swap the cars into 17," Hamilton is told.
"So you don't think I can catch up, or what?" asks the Briton.
Crucially there appears to be some confusion over when the two drivers were told of the decision to swap, for while Hamilton was willing to comply he did not want to lose out to the charging Carlos Sainz behind.
When the first swap fails, Leclerc is told: "Try again next lap."
Hamilton subsequently yields. "It's OK, it's OK," says Leclerc. "We are seeing Antonelli, let's try to get him. Otherwise we are going to lose more time than anything. Then we discuss after the race."
"Sainz 1.4 behind." Hamilton is told.
"You want me to let him past as well?" Hamilton dryly replies. Ouch!
Speaking at race end, Hamilton was keen to make clear that it was heat of the moment sarcasm and not open criticism of the team, revealing that when (team boss) Fred Vasseur had sought him out he told him to calm down.
"Fred came to my room," said the Briton. "I just put my hand on his shoulder and said, like, dude, calm down. Don't be so sensitive.
"I could have said way worse things on the radio," he added. "You've got to understand we're under a huge amount of pressure within the car.
"You're never going to get the most peaceful messages coming through in the heat of the battle," he continued. "It wasn't even anger," he insisted. "It wasn't like, effing and blinding and anything like that. It's like, make a decision! You're sitting there on the chair, you've got the stuff in front of you, make the decision, quick.
"I was like, come on guys, I want to win," he explained. "I've still got my fire in my belly. I could feel a bit of it really coming up there. I'm not going to apologise for being a fighter. I'm not going to apologise for still wanting it. I know everyone in the team does too, and I truly believe that when we fix some of the problems that we have with the car, we'll be back in the fight with the Mercedes, with the Bulls. It just can't come quick enough.
"We'll try something different in the next race, we'll keep working on the processes. I look forward to a time when maybe I can fight for a podium. That would be nice."
"I can perfectly understand the frustration," said Vasseur. "They are champions, they want to win races. We are asking them to let the team go. It's not easy. It's never easy and I didn't see another team to do it today. That's why we took the responsibility to do it because it's the policy to the team.
"We are racing for Ferrari first and honestly I think as a team we did a good job."
For his part, Leclerc also questioned the way in which things had been handled, insisting that he placed no blame on his teammate.
"I think the story is going to be big enough already," he told reporters. "We need to do better, that's for sure. Today was not ideal and was far from maximising our potential, but we've got to regroup as a team and be better."
Asked if he would have given way to Hamilton without being instructed, he admitted: "Not really, because I knew Lewis was on a medium, so if anything, he would struggle a bit more to go to the end than me, so we had to take care of tyres.
But I understand as well that he wanted to try and do something different," he added, "so I appreciate that. I would have done the same thing as if I was him and trying to be a bit more aggressive with the medium tyres.
"There's no bad feelings with Lewis," he insisted, "not at all. I understand that he wants to try and optimise as much as I want to try and optimise the car potential. The car potential is just this, which is frustrating."
"You can argue that it would have been better to do it half a lap before or half a lap later," said Vasseur. "But when you are on the pit wall and you have to understand if the car behind is faster than the car in front, just for DRS or not, it's not an easy call.
"It's always much easier to do it two hours later," he added. "We asked them to do it; they did it. Now the frustration when you are in the car, I can perfectly understand this. And we had a discussion, and it was much more relaxed.
"It's not the story of the day," the Frenchman insisted. "I would be much more keen to speak about why we finished one minute behind McLaren."
In all honesty, in our humble opinion, the story of the day is not the tea break or Sainz digs either, but rather Hamilton's "you guys" comment, as if he doesn't really feel part of the team.
Not for nothing did Ferrari go a couple of decades, between Jody Scheckter and Michael Schumacher, without winning a title, and not for nothing has the Maranello outfit allowed the likes of Prost, Alonso and Vettel to slip through its fingers without making full use of their talent.
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