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Lewis Hamilton doesn't care where he seals F1 world title as champagne stays on ice

Smoking hot: Will Hamilton win the title in Mexico again?: Getty Images
Smoking hot: Will Hamilton win the title in Mexico again?: Getty Images

Lewis Hamilton insists he is not bothered where he seals title No5 after the chance went begging at the United States Grand Prix on Sunday.

Sebastian Vettel, meanwhile, said it was too little, too late as Ferrari finally found the pace to beat Mercedes, albeit for Kimi Raikkonen rather than Vettel, who still has the slimmest mathematical possibility of catching Hamilton.

The Brit, who needs to finish seventh in Mexico next Sunday for another title, said Mercedes would go back to the drawing board after a difficult race in which he had to make do with third behind Raikkonen and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

With the champagne on ice for another weekend, Hamilton said: “I honestly don’t care where we win it. If it was Silverstone, that would be special but, all the others, it doesn’t matter.

“As long as it gets done and then we can sleep better.”

Hamilton hardly looked like a man bereft of sleep at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas. An impressive pole position appeared set to pave the way for a march to victory. However, Raikkonen got the jump on Hamilton at the start and a strategic decision by Mercedes’s hierarchy to come in for a first pitstop after just 11 laps under the virtual safety car, deployed to salvage Daniel Ricciardo’s stricken Red Bull, did not pay off.

While the usually affable Ricciardo punched a hole in the wall of his changing room in frustration, Hamilton was left to ponder what might have been at a track where he has won five of the six grands prix it has hosted.

“It was definitely a lesson learnt,” said Hamilton, who leads Vettel by 70 points with just 75 left on offer.

“And we will go back to the drawing board. Performance wise, it wasn’t our greatest weekend. But you can’t win them all. The result is naturally not the greatest but we still have three to go. That will be the goal — to turn around the good performance we’ve had and see if we can bring it back to the next race.”

Hamilton finished third in the US Grand Prix (AP)
Hamilton finished third in the US Grand Prix (AP)

Vettel’s on-track magnetism for trouble this season again resurfaced as he spun 360 degrees when touching tyres with Ricciardo as the pair vied for track position.

The German clawed his way back up to fourth place behind Hamilton and was left to ponder what might have been had he kept out of danger.

Of Ferrari’s renewed pace at the weekend, which gave team-mate Raikkonen his first win in 2,044 days and 113 races, Vettel said: “It took too long. You can see it as good news but you can also see it as bad news.

“It is not like there is a fundamental problem. All the steps we did, they seemed to make sense. But now looking back, they didn’t.

“The crucial bit has been that for a big part of the season we didn’t really have the speed.

“Overall, we have the potential, we need to still grow and learn, so I think there will be a lot of stuff over the winter we need to review, all of us, including myself.”