New audio reveals exactly what Ferrari told Lewis Hamilton before chaotic pit stop decision at Australian GP

New audio has revealed exactly what was said between Lewis Hamilton and his Ferrari race engineer Riccardo Adami in the minutes before his costly pit stop at the Australian Grand Prix.

Hamilton was in eighth place on lap 44 of 58 when a heavy rain shower completely changed the race order.

After a series of pit stops from those ahead of him and errors from Charles Leclerc and Yuki Tsunoda, the seven-time world champion was in second place behind Max Verstappen.

Verstappen would come in on lap 46 to swap his dry tyres for intermediates - but Ferrari elected to keep Hamilton and Leclerc out on hard tyres.

While they would inherit first and second, the decision proved to be catastrophic as previous race leader Lando Norris - who was on inters - passed both drivers on lap 47 before pulling out a 10-second gap by the end of sector two.

A safety car was then deployed following crashes by Gabriel Bortoleto and Liam Lawson, with Ferrari having little choice but to then pull Hamilton and Leclerc into the pits to change tyres.

They eventually finished in 10th and eighth respectively, missing out on the opportunity to secure a much better result at Albert Park.

Now, the full radio exchange between Hamilton and race engineer has emerged, centring on the lap before the safety car was deployed.

Midway through lap 46, Hamilton can be heard asking whether more rain is coming, to which Adami replies: "Negative. Just this, hopefully. Let's see. Still raining in the pit lane."

"The leader is Verstappen. He's staying out, staying out. Keep it together last sector. Verstappen struggling for grip, be careful there."

Adami then informs Hamilton he is leading the race after Verstappen pits, to which the Brit responds: "Yeah, it's very slippy mate. There's more rain coming down ... Ah s**t, we should have come in. More rain's come. The whole track's wet now."

After a brief pause, his engineer replies: "We should stop in one lap. Keep it together. Charles the car behind - he's on hards ... safety car."

Speaking after the race, Hamilton told Sky Sports F1: "I hung out as long as I could, got in the lead at one point. But the guidance, in terms of how much more rain was coming, was just missing there. So I think we missed out.

"The information I got was that it was just a short shower, real quick. And at the time, it was only in the last corner. So I was like, the rest of the track was dry, I can keep this on track if that's all that's coming. And then more came."