Hamilton overruled Ferrari's pit wall at Sepang, and the lap times back him up

Ferrari sent both Hamilton and Charles Leclerc out on soft slicks on a track that was still damp. Hamilton's own account of the call, and his refusal to come in was explored but was he was right to stay out?

Ferrari tried to bring Hamilton in for intermediates on lap five with the radio exchange with race engineer Carlo Santi, who told him: "If you're happy with that, we can try a gamble." Hamilton replied: "I want to stay out, we made a gamble."

At that point it looked like a bad bet. ScuderiaFans reported that Hamilton was losing more than 20 seconds per lap to the leaders in the opening laps. Telemetry showed in the middle sector of the first racing lap alone, Hamilton lost 12 seconds to leader Kimi Antonelli.

The turning point came just three laps after Ferrari's call. By the end of lap eight, the times on slicks were equal to those of the intermediate runners.

Valtteri Bottas then went off, and the Safety Car that followed allowed the drivers on intermediates to switch to slicks. Had Hamilton pitted on lap five, he would almost certainly have needed a second stop for slicks within a few laps, all for tyres that had stopped being faster.

Hamilton gave his own reasoning after the race, saying: "And once it did, it felt good that I was catching people."

Leclerc's afternoon shows what the alternative looked like. He clipped Nico Hulkenberg's Audi and pitted at the end of the opening lap for a new front wing and intermediates. Even with the tyre change, the time lost by pitting so early kept him behind Hamilton, who ran longer on his softs and quickly started gaining places.

The final classification bears that out with Hamilton in third, 4.919 seconds behind winner Max Verstappen, after two pit stops. Leclerc was fourth at 7.258 seconds after four stops.

The evidence does not all point one way however. Ferrari's real error was not switching to intermediates once the slicks were clearly struggling. Leclerc, on inters, lapped close to Verstappen and even passed his teammate.

Leclerc's stop was also forced by front-wing damage rather than chosen purely on strategy. And Hamilton's recovery got a lot of help from the Safety Cars, including the late one that allowed him to switch back to softs before he passed Isack Hadjar.

Still, the timeline is the strongest argument in Hamilton's favour. The pit wall wanted him in on lap five, and by the end of lap eight the tyre he had refused was no longer the faster one.

That comes on top of his pre-race warning that the track was still wet. It is likely to come up in the talks with Ferrari that he promised after the race.