Lewis Hamilton breaks his silence on his dig at Fernando Alonso for his "I don't believe it" team radio rant

Lewis Hamilton has addressed his dig at Fernando Alonso on social media after the Spaniard's "I don't believe it" team radio rant in Singapore. In what were the dying stages of the F1 Singapore GP, the Ferrari driver ended up losing the functionality of his brakes with a few laps left.

Ideally, this would have been a scenario where a driver is forced to come to the pits and retire the car, but with only a handful of laps left, Lewis Hamilton decided to manage the car until the end. As a result, the chasing Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso would significantly close the gap on the Ferrari.

At the same time, however, while Lewis Hamilton was completing his race, the driver ended up cutting the track multiple times on his way to the finish line. The manner in which the Ferrari driver went about completing his race infuriated Fernando Alonso, who would be unable to overtake Hamilton on track and lose out by less than a second.

It led to a foul-mouthed team radio from the Spaniard about the manner in which the driver executed his race. After the race, Lewis Hamilton would be given a 5-second penalty, essentially helping Fernando Alonso leapfrog the Ferrari driver. The 7x F1 champion, however, took a dig at Alonso's radio rant with a clip from a British TV show.

Talking to the media during the pre-race press conference, Hamilton was questioned if he had a chat with Alonso after Singapore, to which he said

"I don’t believe it! No, I haven’t seen Fernando—I haven’t seen him since then. But yeah, it was just a bit of fun. It reminded me of that show—I hadn’t seen it in 20-plus years. I thought it was funny, so I posted it. What is life if you can’t have a little fun?"

Talking about the struggle to just bring the car home after the brakes failed, the driver revealed,

"Yeah, the last few laps were definitely nerve-wracking. I’ve finished races before with three tyres, and now I’ve finished one with three brakes. Not something I want to experience again. I could stop the car, but in those scenarios, the pedal just went straight to the floor. So I had no choice but to go onto those exit roads—I wouldn’t have made the corner otherwise. The FIA penalty was fine. Doesn’t really make a big difference to me anyway."

Lewis Hamilton on his approach the rest of the season

Talking about the rest of the season, Lewis Hamilton said that he viewed the last 6 races as a test where he was trying to focus on continuity and improving the processes during the race weekend. Talking about how there have been a few weekends where the team has been unable to capitalize, he said,

"Yeah. I’m really looking at the next six races as, ultimately, test weekends in terms of continuing to learn and improve on our processes. As I said in the last races, there’s been a couple of gems through the weekend that we didn’t capitalise on. So it’s about taking those good bits and continuing to take what works and change what doesn’t."

He added,

"That’s what we’re trying to do moving forward—continuing to build on the relationships, continue to build on communication. Everyone back at the factory really deserves a good result, and that’s the sole focus—to get good results, try to maximise, squeeze absolutely every point we can out of our performances on the weekends. And I really believe we can do that. So we just stay focused."

Lewis Hamilton has a brilliant track record at Austin, where he has won the race 5 times. Ferrari was the winner here last time around, and even though that might be a bridge too far, the driver would be hoping for a strong outing.