Lewis Hamilton pens APOLOGY to F1 fans, aims dig at FIA ahead of Mexican Grand Prix

All eyes will be on Hamilton this weekend to see if he can finally wrap up the 2018 driver’s championship.

He missed the chance to clinch his fifth title last weekend at the US Grand Prix after finishing third, just ahead of Sebastian Vettel in fourth.

But all Hamilton needs to do in Sunday’s race is finish seventh or higher to ensure he wins the championship.

He did struggle at last year’s Mexican Grand Prix, finishing ninth after colliding with Vettel on the opening lap.

There will be some hope that Hamilton could win the championship in style, but fans in attendance this weekend anticipating seeing the Briton in action in free practice may have been frustrated.

In the final free practice run before Saturday’s qualifying session, rain played havoc with teams’ plans.

The track wasn’t quite wet enough for intermediate tyres to be fitted and it meant there was a wait of over 30 minutes for any action to get started.

During that time, Hamilton took to Instagram to apologise to fans waiting to see the drivers.

And he took aim at the FIA and Pirelli for not allowing teams an extra set of tyres in these circumstances.

“I’m sorry to all the fans sitting out there and there’s been no running yet,” Hamilton wrote on his Instagram story.

“The FIA/Pirelli won’t give the teams an extra set of trees to run in this condition so we are forced to just sit tight and save the tyres we have in case rain comes in qualifying and the race.”

Max Verstappen won the 2017 Mexican Grand Prix while Hamilton’s only victory in Mexico came in 2016.

The Red Bull duo once again look like favourites this weekend through the practice sessions, and Hamilton isn’t confident of competing with them at the top of the podium.

“Red Bull seem out of our reach at the moment, Ferrari are right there with us, but we’re here to try and compete, so we will do the best we can to have a real race,” Hamilton said.

“We’ve got some ground to catch up on, so we’re now going to go through everything in the debrief and look at all the details to find some answers.”