An emotional Lewis Hamilton has apologised to his fans after a heartbreaking finish to the United States Grand Prix. Hamilton headed to the States without a victory, with the Englishman heading for his first winless season of his Formula 1 career.
His tough run finally looked to be coming to an end in Texas as the seven-time world champion took advantage of his third place start to battle his way to the front and dominate the race throughout. Sadly for Hamilton the nightmare of his 2021 title miss came back to haunt him.
This came after his arch rival and back-to-back world champion Max Verstappen battled back to overtake Hamilton late on and secure his seventh win in eight races.
The agonising second place finish was clearly a tough one to take for the Englishman post-race, and he took it upon himself to apologise to his fans for missing out on the win. He told Sky Sports: "Sorry I couldn't get the win, I gave it absolutely everything.
"I mean, I don't know, I can't put in words how much it would mean to the team. Especially with everything that's going on, everything that's happened in the last race last year.
"Then what's happened this year in terms of our performance, and then what's happened with all the news and everything, so I mean to get a win would be a huge triumph for us all and hugely rewarding." It has been a tricky year for both Hamilton and his Mercedes team.
The seven-time world champion has endured a difficult campaign in his 2022 W13 car, as the Silver Arrows struggled to adapt to the FIA's newly-introduced vehicle rulings for the current season. His impressive showing in the States came after his team added a number of upgrades to the car.
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And Hamilton paid tribute to this and the hard work the team put in post-race. He commented: "We came here with upgrades, they worked so hard to bring those upgrades in and it really had an effect - we were so close to today - so, really proud of everybody.
"Obviously we're in that lead and I can see he (Verstappen) was closing a second lap and I couldn't really answer to it for a while. He came from so far back on the straight. I think that they're a lot you know, like 10kph faster than us normally on the straight anyways."
