Mexican GP: Lewis Hamilton points finger at Sebastian Vettel in briefing

A candid look inside the drivers' briefing meeting from the Mexican GP weekend.

Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel were involved in another tense exchange in the F1 drivers' briefing at the Mexican GP, with the 2017 world champion accusing his rival of knowingly bending the rules at the previous race.

The meeting of the drivers and FIA race director Charlie Whiting occurred after Friday's practice sessions and before Hamilton's title triumph, with the agenda instead set on the track limits issue from the United States GP.

Max Verstappen was penalised for his last-lap overtake on Kimi Raikkonen for 'gaining an advantage' in that race - but Hamilton was keen to bring up Vettel's driving in Austin.

Hamilton had a five-second lead over Vettel before the first round of pit-stops, but the German was suddenly within DRS range when the Mercedes driver emerged from the pit exit.

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And Hamilton claimed he had GPS data to prove Vettel took went wide at Turn 19 to give himself more speed up the start-finish straight at the Circuit of the Americas.

In fact, the Englishman, who won his fourth title on Sunday, even told Sky F1's Martin Brundle that a "very smart" Vettel gained more than a second at the penultimate corner.

While Vettel didn't interject or dispute Hamilton's claim in the briefing, he later went on to give Whiting some pointers on how tracks could be set out to discourage drivers from running off-track.

Watch the Mexican GP drivers' briefing by clicking play on the video above.

Hamilton points the finger: The transcript

Hamilton: "I have a question. Just after my pitstop, Sebastian deliberately ran wide out of Turn 9 [Turn 19] and gained a lot of time on the GPS. But it had no penalty."
Whiting: "We didn't see that on the sector that I was just describing to Felipe [Massa]. We saw a 0.3s improvement in lap time, but obviously everyone saw it, it wasn't a secret."
Hamilton: "If you saw an improvement, that's an advantage, so..."
Whiting: "We saw a 0.3s improvement in his lap time."
Hamilton: "Which is an advantage, which is an improvement, so..."
Whiting: "It was an improvement in his lap time but he didn't gain a time in that corner where he went off. That's the point."
Hamilton: "Maybe we can send you the GPS because it's massively different. I think it's like 10k's[km/h] up all through that corner, knowingly."
Whiting: "If you look at the actual time it took to go through the light panel before turn 19 to the light panel before turn 20, it was the same. So he didn't gain anything there. That's what we were trying to use to judge those things."

Don't miss the F1 Report at 8.30pm on Wednesday on Sky F1 as Ted Kravitz and Marc Priestley join Natalie Pinkham to review the Mexican GP and Lewis Hamilton's fourth world championship title.

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