Lewis Hamilton had a tense radio exchange with his race engineer after crashing his Ferrari into the barriers during Saturday’s final practice session for the Madrid Grand Prix.

Madrid’s unforgiving “Madring” circuit, already earning a reputation for damaging cars, claimed another casualty when Hamilton ran wide and struck the wall while appearing set to post the quickest lap before qualifying.

The impact inflicted significant damage on the front wing. Hamilton, a seven-time Formula 1 world champion, was instructed to abandon the Ferrari so a recovery vehicle could take it back to the garage.

Instead, the 41-year-old ignored the initial instruction, reversed away from the barriers and rejoined the circuit in an apparent attempt to bring the car back himself.

Despite repeated calls over the radio to “stop the car,” Hamilton continued with a punctured tyre before eventually bringing the damaged Ferrari to a halt.

The incident comes amid reported strain inside Ferrari, following a heated encounter between Hamilton and team-mate Charles Leclerc at last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix.

Hamilton was forced off the circuit by Leclerc during the early position battle through the second half of the opening chicane last Sunday, an incident that appeared to be the Monegasque driver’s fault. “Charles pushed me off,” Hamilton said over the radio.

Leclerc then crashed moments later at Parabolica in a separate incident, also blamed on driver error, producing a heavy impact. Hamilton ultimately finished sixth, leaving Ferrari with a disappointing home-race result.

In a message to team principal Fred Vasseur, Hamilton said: “Here there are no rules. And that’s something that needs to change. When I was at Mercedes we had written rules of engagement. And we never had it too bad.”

‘There was a moment with me and Nico a couple of times. But more often than not, it was good. Here there are no rules.

But speaking ahead of the new home of the Spanish Grand Prix, Hamilton revealed he held crunch talks with his team-mate: ‘What is great is that there was no shying away from having a discussion. We sat face to face, just him (Charles) and me, and talked about it and we were both honest and open and then we quashed it and moved on.

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‘That shows maturity from him and it is healthy. It is a relationship we have built over time.

‘Of course, there are going to be frustrations along the way. And there will be more times where we are close because we are approximate in pace and we both want to win as much as each other and do well for the team, but, yes, it is really positive.

‘It has been really positive. I spoke to Fred (Vasseur, Ferrari’s team principal) on Monday and we had clearing out discussions.

‘Naturally we are going to have different opinions, but we come together to find a way forward and that is the positive of where we have got to over the past 15 months, when we can have really great communication internally and same with me and Charles.

‘If you look at the history of the sport, this happened before, so it is no biggie.’

Hamilton spoke after the race in Italy about needing rules of engagement. Have they been agreed?

‘No,’ he said. ‘Right now I am trying to focus on having a better weekend. I am sure at some stage we will discuss how we can be better but we have not had a lot of time. You can’t change things in two days.’

Hamilton’s deficit to Mercedes’ championship leader Kimi Antonelli stands at 76 points. It is a vertical fight for the Briton. Tough, but the target is not insurmountable.

Chasing a never-achieved eighth title, Hamilton said: ‘Mathematically it is not impossible, but it is the biggest gap I have seen in a long, long time, and at this stage of the year, too (with 10 rounds remaining).

‘Mercedes are the leaders, out ahead, and doing a fantastic job and we should just focus on doing our best each weekend.

‘My job at Ferrari is a long-term process and not something that will change this weekend. There are a huge amount of moving parts, a lot of people, and a culture that has been there for a long time. Moving pieces are not so easy. It doesn’t happen overnight. But we will get there.’

Anti-migrant demonstrators are set to march through Portsmouth today, with police warning participants against concealing their faces and saying further arrests could follow.

The Portsmouth protest comes after a series of Right-wing demonstrations held since last weekend, including an incident in which several hundred men wearing black clothing and balaclavas obstructed entry to the Port of Dover.

Danny Thomas, who organised the Dover action, said on social media on Friday that he would not attend the Portsmouth event. However, he urged ‘as many people as possible’ to gather in the seaside city.

Hampshire Police said legal powers have been put in place for the demonstration, making it an offence for people involved in protest activity to use face coverings to hide their identity.

Under powers granted by the Crime and Policing Act, officers can arrest anyone found covering their face for that purpose within the designated area.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Hampshire Police said: ‘We will support those who want to express their views peacefully and lawfully, but we will not tolerate those whose only aim is to create fear and incite violence.’

The protesters are due to leave All Saints Church on Commercial Road at 12.30pm before heading towards Guildhall Square.

Marchers will be required to remain on an agreed route. Portsmouth Patriots, the event organisers, and associated groups have been assigned a meeting point close to All Saints Church.

A counter demonstration planned by Stand Up To Racism must gather in a specified area adjacent to the protest.

Failure to comply with conditions could lead to arrest, the force said.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood met police on Thursday for reassurance they are ready to move quickly in dealing with ‘far-right groups’ seeking to intimidate communities after the events in Dover and Portsmouth last weekend.

Overnight last Sunday, several hundred people gathered at Eastney Marina after a dinghy’s arrival across the English Channel in a bid to prevent the 120 migrants leaving the area on coaches.

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Official vehicles were damaged and a small number of police officers were injured, Hampshire Police said.

About 200 people were dispersed early on Monday.

In Dover, crowds of masked men blocked road access to the port last Saturday, in scenes which were condemned by politicians of all parties.

Yesterday the force announced that a man has been charged with violent disorder and assaulting a police constable in the execution of their duty in relation to Sunday’s protest in Portsmouth.

They said the arrest of Del Leon Somerville, 42, of Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, was the first of what they anticipated to be ‘a number of’ detentions regarding the ‘violent public disorder’ and hit back at claims online that the event was a peaceful protest.

Somerville appeared at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court, sitting at the crown court, this morning.

He did not enter any pleas at the short hearing to charges of violent disorder between September 5 and 8 in Portsmouth, and assaulting a constable on September 11 in Waterlooville.

Prosecutor Lucy Paddick told the court he was accused of throwing a bottle towards a police line and was allegedly heard telling officers to ‘f*** off’ as the bottle was thrown.

Somerville is also alleged to have kicked out at Pc Peskett, making contact with the officer’s right thigh, when he was arrested, the court heard.

He was remanded into custody at the hearing, supported by members of his family in the courtroom, ahead of his next appearance at Portsmouth Crown Court on September 16.

Ms Mahmood said: ‘These scenes have caused disruption for people and, given that people are dressed in black wearing balaclavas, there is a fear factor and obvious malign intent being communicated to our residents.

‘This makes it different from other protests, so we need to make sure we are learning lessons.’

Australian journalist Latika Bourke has taken aim at the Albanese government after pointed questions she put to Defence Minister Richard Marles were omitted from an official transcript and instead marked as “inaudible”.

The exchange occurred at a London press conference earlier this month, where Marles was pressed over his assertion that Australia spends 2.8 per cent of GDP on defence — a figure he says places the country ahead of most NATO nations.

Bourke, an Australia-born journalist based in the UK, attended the briefing and said in a newsletter published on Friday that the transcript did not include the questions she asked from roughly a metre away from the minister.

“At Defence Minister Richard Marles’ last press conference in London, I asked him about his intentions — or not — to raise defence spending,” she wrote.

“But the official transcript issued by his office and posted on the department’s website rendered nearly all my questions ‘inaudible’.

“Given I was standing about a metre from the minister, it’s unfortunate that the official transcribers were unable to hear my questions.”

A review of the document by the Daily Mail on Saturday afternoon found that several questions understood to have come from Bourke had been recorded simply as “inaudible”.

Although she raised doubts about the missing questions, Bourke acknowledged that the diplomatic service had made what she described as a “mystifying” choice to stage the media event amid a “windstorm”.

Ms Bourke said she was giving Marles’ office the ‘benefit of the doubt’. However, Strategic Analysis Australia director Michael Shoebridge noted it was a ‘striking coincidence’.

‘Claiming inconvenient questions are ‘inaudible’ can be a way of censoring information while being able to claim it’s just a technical issue,’ he told the Daily Mail. 

‘If that’s what’s going on, it is covert censorship, and that’s damaging in a democracy. 

‘It’s a striking coincidence that the journalist’s questions drilling into Marles’ creative accounting on defence spending seem to be the ones listed as “inaudible” in the transcript. 

‘I’ve often found I have trouble hearing inconvenient questions, but it’s sad to see it happening to a minister and their staff.’

Mr Shoebridge also echoed Ms Bourke, saying the claim that Australia spends 2.8 per cent of GDP on defence is still short of the NATO benchmark of five per cent (which is made up of 3.5 per cent on core defence items and a further 1.5 per cent on related items, such as infrastructure capable of handling military systems). 

‘Marles’ media performances create the impression that he has been open and clear about defence spending and his claimed increases,’ Mr Shoebridge said.

He claimed, by his analysis, the figure is ‘just over two per cent of GDP and will slowly move to about 2.3 per cent in 10 years’. 

‘Australia’s spending is not matching Marles’ words about the increasingly dangerous world we are living in,’ Mr Shoebridge said.

‘The lack of openness and clarity from the government on defence spending is helpful to ministers because it means key partners – like the Trump Administration – don’t understand what Australia is actually committing to. 

‘Clarity might result in political pressure on the government to make actual increases towards the NATO five per cent benchmark.’

The Daily Mail has contacted Marles’ office for comment on the claims made by both Ms Bourke and Mr Shoebridge. 

Ms Bourke included her questions – and Mr Marles’ answers – in her newsletter.

She said she was sharing them ‘in the interests of posterity and the ongoing debate about whether governments are funding their militaries adequately, given the increasing security threats’.

According to Ms Bourke’s transcript, she repeatedly asked Mr Marles when Australia would raise defence spending to five per cent of GDP – the NATO standard – as well as the NATO target of 3.5 per cent by 2035.

Marles’ first comments, which were transcribed by the defence department, criticised Ms Bourke’s coverage in The Nightly.

Ms Bourke had written that Australia would only reach a NATO spending target of three per cent in 2033 and 2034, and the figure had not been raised ‘in any meaningful way’.

‘I saw what you’ve written in your commentary. I mean, it is wrong, actually wrong,’ Marles said.

‘We increased defence spending in terms of capability by $40billion over the forward estimates by $53billion over the decade in the National Defence Strategy this year alone over the decade.

‘That is a $53billion injection, and that’s in terms of capability, not the other stuff that you’re talking about, is the single biggest injection in terms of Australian defence spending in decades, more than anything that occurred during the Coalition period.’

Marles said Australia is ‘injecting $117 billion more over the planning ten-year period’, adding that it ‘represents the biggest increase in defence spending in peacetime Australian history’.

When Bourke asked if Marles would release what is calculated in all defence spending, he said the government had already done so. 

‘We do, we release all of that information,’ he said.

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Andy Burnham and officials at the Home Office might find it far simpler if the crowd looked like the masked, black-clad anti-migrant protesters seen recently in Dover, Portsmouth and outside the Daily Mail’s offices.

That image would make it easier to dismiss them as Far Right agitators, cranks, or some combination of the two.

But the residents gathered here present a less convenient picture. They are wearing jumpers, gilets, jackets and jeans — unmistakably country-casual rather than confrontational.

Among them are farmers, accountants, engineers, builders, homemakers and public-sector workers. Women make up many, perhaps most, of those involved, and there is not a face covering in sight.

Nor is it easy for political strategists to brand them as stereotypical Reform or Restore supporters. At the most recent elections, the village backed a Liberal Democrat MP and elected three Lib Dem councillors, although that allegiance may not endure. There are no English or British flags fastened to Piddington’s few lampposts.

This is Piddington: an attractive Oxfordshire village with a population of 358, where residents are preparing to vote on whether to leave the United Kingdom after learning that more than 1,250 asylum seekers could be housed nearby.

The proposed residents are described as young, single and undocumented men, who would be allowed to enter and leave their accommodation at a former Ministry of Defence (MoD) facility on the village outskirts.

Piddington has no shops, cafés or obvious daytime distractions. Some asylum seekers may take the first bus to nearby Bicester — provided one arrives — but residents are asking what everyone else will do for the remainder of the day.

These are some of the many questions flying around the room this week as I drop in on a gathering which feels more like the Boston Tea Party than your ordinary parish council meeting.

For I find the village making its final plans ahead of Tuesday’s historic vote on a simple yes/no issue: Should Piddington secede from the United Kingdom and become a principality – like Monaco or Liechtenstein? 

The result will be announced, by-election style, on Wednesday morning. And I am more than happy to wager my house on the result.

Before this week’s gathering closes and people adjourn to the bar, I ask parish council chairman Tim McNally to read out the question on the ballot paper – ‘Yes or No: I support Piddington seeking to secede from the United Kingdom and pursuing self-determination’. 

I then ask those packed into the village hall (most of the electorate) to raise their hands if they intend to vote ‘Yes’. The result is a thumping Vladimir Putin/North Korea-style nem con slam dunk: 100 per cent in favour.

Nonetheless, the referendum will be held formally and correctly, under strict electoral protocols with numbered voting papers and a secret ballot. It will not be legally binding, since the Government has not authorised the vote.

One local council official has actually warned the villagers that it is illegal. So much for all that chips ‘n gravy baloney about localism and devolution from ‘King of the North’ Andy Burnham. Here in rural Oxfordshire they want their own Prince of Piddington.

It is now two months since the Daily Mail first dropped in on this saga. Back then, I likened it, half-jokingly, to the plot of the old 1949 Ealing comedy, Passport To Pimlico – in which the residents of a small London district discover an ancient treaty which means they are still part of Burgundy and, thus, not British and not subject to post-war rations and taxes.

Our Piddington story captured the imagination of the national and international media, not least because it has all the essential ingredients – picture postcard village with funny name/medieval church/rolling acres/history/colourful cross-section of articulate locals. It could easily host an episode of Midsomer Murders, a series filmed just down the road.

Yet behind the good humour and the sensible jerseys, these locals are every bit as serious and angry as those Poundland paramilitaries in their balaclavas down on the South Coast.

Back in July, neither the local MP for Bicester and Woodstock, Lib Dem Calum Miller, nor Cherwell District Council, run by the Lib Dems with Green support, wanted to talk to me about this local uprising. 

They had voiced the mandatory dismay at the lack of consultation from the Home Office, having been told out of the blue that the old MoD depot on the edge of Piddington was scheduled to become an open-door migrant centre.

However, not wanting to look in any way xenophobic, the MP then signed a letter in support of the asylum seekers while the council steered all questions to the Home Office which, in turn, said it was committed to moving small boat arrivals out of hotels.

The official response, in other words, was to write off the story as a sweet little silly season spasm of local anger and let it all blow over in a week or two.

Except, the Piddington story has not gone away. The world’s media has followed the Daily Mail down here. TV networks from America to Australia have latched on to the story. Even the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has pitched in to voice support.

Here is a Government spin doctor’s nightmare: A grass-roots movement which resolutely refuses to fall into a stereotypical subset ripe for demonisation as either ‘Far Right’ or ‘Nimby’.

You need only look at this week’s video message from the female half of the village which has already clocked up more than two million hits without even trying. It is accompanied by a letter to every female MP asking for solidarity in the face of an influx of single foreign young men with nothing to do except hang around a village.

As the 133-strong ‘Women of Piddington’ state in their appeal to the parliamentary sisterhood: ‘They would outnumber us ten to one. As fellow women, you will understand the serious risks.’

In fact, they could be outnumbered 26 to one if the Home Office opts to install 3,500 asylum seekers here, as an earlier blueprint suggested, although officials have now denied that this is the plan. 

The ‘Women of Piddington’ are not stopping there, of course. When Samantha Phillips stands up at this week’s meeting to offer a course in female self-defence, all 26 places are swiftly snapped up.

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It is just another example of how this village has found a very effective alternative to blokes in balaclavas. Piddington is now on the map with a smile rather than a scowl. It also seems to have an uncanny knack for publicity.

It was back in July that the chairman of the parish council, management consultant Tim McNally, deliberately chose July 4 for a vote on whether to stage a referendum at all. ‘The USA was celebrating 250 years of independence on the same day and we thought we’d model ourselves on them,’ he told me at the time.

A polling booth was set up at the village hall for the day – all of it monitored on CCTV – and the result was an overwhelming vote in favour of holding an independence referendum (plus one invitation to a barn dance).

The campaigners then fixed a date for that plebiscite. Next Tuesday, September 15, seemed perfect. It comes ahead of Thursday’s deadline for contributions to the ‘public consultation’ on the quadrupling of the local population. 

Everyone accepts that this process is merely a box-ticking exercise which the Government must always undertake before pressing ahead with whatever it has decided to do in the first place.

Piddington therefore picked Tuesday so that the vote can be announced before the deadline.

‘I was on TV explaining that we would be holding our vote on September 15,’ recalls Mr McNally. ‘Then the presenter said, ‘So you have chosen Battle of Britain Day’. It was only then that I realised that we really had. So we are now calling ourselves ‘Ground Zero for the Battle of Britain’.’

September 15 is, indeed, the official anniversary of the 114-day battle in 1940. The Home Office spin doctors will be displeased to hear that a supporter has offered to fly a Spitfire over Piddington next week. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It will depend on the weather,’ adds Mr McNally.

This is a slick operation in every regard. This week’s meeting includes media training. Villagers are told to expect saturation press attention and ‘to speak from the heart’ about what they want for the principality of Piddington. ‘Tax-free shopping!’ shouts one old chap at the back to gales of laughter.

Mr McNally is recruiting local children to design a new flag for an independent Piddington. This is a canny electorate. Many are boffins from the world of Formula One, given the concentration of motor racing teams in and around Oxfordshire.

Engineer James Burton has designed a very professional new Tiktok video to go with the new Piddington song – ‘It’s the Battle for Britain’ – complete with computer-generated wartime scenes and a dazzling heroine in Forties chic.

‘Everyone in this hall is of a certain age, let’s face it,’ he says. ‘We want to reach 16-24-year-olds all over the country.’

The village is scouring the Whitehall rulebook to use it against Whitehall, not least draconian bat protection legislation. 

Farmer Joy Haw-Cook, 56, has been put in charge of the bat survey and stands up to report on her findings with a local bat expert in to help. ‘One of them is incredibly rare and is on the Red List as ‘one of the rarest and most elusive mammals in the UK’. So that is really great news for us!’ She receives a hefty round of applause.

‘Call me Batwoman or ‘Old Bat’,’ she jokes. ‘I didn’t know much about bats before but I do now and you can’t disturb very rare bats until the breeding season is over. A judge could put an injunction on the site until May.’

‘People just feel the Government is not listening,’ says accountant and deputy chair of the parish council, Susannah Parden, who has been appointed returning officer for the referendum.

‘We are giving all our freedoms to people who have simply broken into the country and we feel unsafe,’ says Krissy Honour, a farmer with a 13-year-old daughter. ‘She’s got her own flock of sheep on our smallholding right next to the MoD. I won’t be letting her out to look after them if we have no idea who these men are.’

Communities in the same boat from across Britain have been in touch with the Piddington team to discuss tactics.

The campaigners here are also feeding their research and ideas into a broader protest group drawn from across the Bicester area. Called ‘Wrong Plan. Wrong Site’, it is seeking a judicial review of the Home Office’s decision.

More legalistic in tone, this has the support of the local MP. 

‘Residents across our community have worked to expose the serious flaws in the proposal to build an asylum centre at MoD Bicester,’ says Calum Miller in a written statement. 

‘My goal has been to unite the various local groups around a community-based, inclusive campaign so that our area speaks with one voice to Government in expressing our opposition. I have challenged the Prime Minister to live up to his pledge to give agency and control back to local areas.’

He declines to say how he would vote in the referendum, if he lived in Piddington.

I get no response from Cherwell Council, although Mr McNally says he received a ‘curious’ call from them. ‘We got a missed call and rang it straight back and it was the council’s electoral services department. They said they hadn’t called but then said that the referendum was against the law. We are only allowed to hold a vote on things like what colour to paint the church gates.’

Ultimately, last week’s scenes on the coast and next week’s vote in Piddington all underline the same point: No one in Britain is buying the old liberal narrative that the (ever-expanding) small boats are packed with doctors, engineers and families fleeing war and oppression. Nor do people believe that they are ‘frontline’ workers without whom the NHS will implode.

It is accepted that these are, simply, people – many from peaceful Commonwealth countries – with an unimpeachable aspiration to make a better life for themselves and also the wherewithal to pay a people smuggler £3,000 for a ride on a boat.

Once they land, they can pretend to be whatever and whoever they like and, according to a Home Office whistleblower, they will be believed. As The Times revealed this week, the number of those granted asylum who are actually in genuine need of asylum stands at just 1 per cent.

None of which is the primary concern of the ‘Women of Piddington’ whom I meet.

 What concerns them most is the fact that their future neighbours have such a limited grasp of British culture and norms that the Government now feels the need to issue them with leaflets informing them that rape is illegal.

That is why, come Wednesday morning’s referendum result, Piddington will be casting around for a prince.