Sir Lewis Hamilton appeared to reject a hug from FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem in an awkward moment following the Bahrain Grand Prix.
A dominant drive from pole saw Oscar Piastri claim victory in Sakhir on Sunday, ahead of George Russell and Lando Norris.
After four races, Piastri is just three points behind McLaren teammate and championship leader Norris, with the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix to follow next weekend.
It was a better race for Hamilton who has endured a tough start to life at Ferrari, with the seven-time champion finishing fifth from ninth on the grid and – somewhat surprisingly – winning the fans’ Driver of the Day vote.
But in the aftermath of the grand prix, fans caught a somewhat awkward exchange between the Brit and Ben Sulayem as the FIA President waited to greet the driver.
Standing outside the weigh-bridge where drivers are obliged to weigh themselves immediately after the race, cameras caught Ben Sulayem with his arms outstretched waiting to embrace Hamilton.
But the 40-year-old just gave the Emirati a quick pat on the side before quickly walking off to the weigh-bridge.
There has been much tension between F1 drivers and the FIA President, in part due to the controversial ‘swearing ban’ implemented by the sport’s governing body at the insistence of Ben Sulayem.
Hamilton in particular took issue with Ben Sulayem likening drivers’ language to that used in ‘rap music’, saying last year: ‘Saying “rappers” is very stereotypical. If you think about it, most rappers are black.
‘So when it says: “We are not like them”, those are the wrong choice of words. There is a racial element there.’
After the race at the Bahrain International Circuit, an exasperated Hamilton explained his early season struggles, telling Sky Sports: ‘It just feels so alien, it really does feel so alien.
‘Sometimes I think we all [as drivers] get stuck in our ways, very stuck, I need to keep driving the way I’ve been driving, just make the car come to me a bit, and that’s not working.
‘So I’m adjusting myself to the car, and also just the way the tools that they use, it just drives so much differently. Just one example, I’ve never used engine braking before in the past 12 years, but here we use a lot of engine braking to turn the car.
‘We have much different brakes, the brakes are so much different to what I had in the past.
‘In the last stint I had to use the rears to turn the car, and other times you have to put more weight on the front, so it’s probably a bigger balance window than I’m used to as well.’
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