Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said he was "frustrated" at the way the incident played out.

"It's a lot of frustration for me but I'm not the most important," he said. "It's a lot of frustration for the 2,000 people working for the project. And this I will need time to digest."

The Frenchman added: "We'll discuss tonight, we'll fix it tomorrow and then we'll be focused on the cycle."

Hamilton added: "Fred's doing his best. Fred came and spoke to me before the race and I think he was nervous and I think he just wanted us, of course, he wants these two drivers to do well.

"From my side, if I'm coming from behind and I'm taking all the risk and it ends up we lose as a team, then I think I'd have some answering to do, because it impacts a lot of people.

"But the other way around, I'm in the lead and it was just unnecessary.

"The core thing to remember, which maybe that comes with age, but every decision you make in the car impacts all the people that work in the background for the whole team.

"So working as a team, part of our job and part of our contract is we have to work as a team, which we could have easily done today. So it's a shame to see us lose as we did. It will continue unless action is taken."

On Leclerc, Hamilton said: "The guy's 28 years old, so I don't think it's an age thing. I think it's a mentality thing. It's like do or die, either I win or none of us do, and it shouldn't be that."

The incident was the latest and arguably most serious of a series of tensions between Hamilton and Leclerc this season.

It follows Leclerc pushing Hamilton off track at the first corner of the Italian Grand Prix.

The race before that, Leclerc ignored a team order to let Hamilton by when they were on different strategies.

In Singapore last month, there was another incident when Hamilton felt he should have been let by when they were on different tyres, but Ferrari refused to make the call.

Verstappen, who capitalised on this latest battle in Mexico, said: "Ferrari were really fast, I do think they made it a little bit difficult for themselves fighting each other and that's why I was able to capitalise on that. I mean, I take it, right?"