Lewis Hamilton’s warning to McLaren pair amid Max Verstappen fight

Lewis Hamilton has given his expert advice to McLaren drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris amid their championship battle with Max Verstappen.

Verstappen has taken 64 points out of Piastri to slash the Australian’s lead at the top of the championship standings to 40 points with three victories in the past four races.

With 141 points still left for grabs in the remaining five weekends, Verstappen declared “the chance is there” to secure an unlikely fifth world championship after taking a dominant victory in the United States Grand Prix.

Piastri is 14 points clear of McLaren teammate and closest rival Norris, who has impressively been gaining ground since he suffered a heartbreaking retirement at the Dutch Grand Prix and has recent momentum on his side.

Seven-time world champion Hamilton knows exactly what it is like going head-to-head with Verstappen for the world title, having done so during their epic battle in 2021.

“Obviously they’ve won championships in other categories,” the Ferrari driver told Sky Sports F1. “In that scenario, it’s challenging when you are in the team, the pressure is high.

“It’s definitely a time where you really have to put your blinkers up. You have to block absolutely everything from the outside, because there’s so much coming in - positive and negative.

“Also, you really have to be cutthroat. That’s what Max is. He’s going to take this from them if they don’t do the same.

“They’ve got to be pushing and you’ve got to dig deep to be able to hold off someone like Max and the car that he is in at the moment, but also for either of them to come out ahead.

“Consistency is key and you’ve seen that from Max in the last few races.”

Hamilton set to play catch up in Mexico

Hamilton encouragingly stated that he finally feels like he is getting on top of his Ferrari car after equalling his best result of the season last time out with fourth place in Austin.

However, Hamilton’s preparations will take a slight hit in Mexico City, with the 40-year-old Briton among nine drivers stepping aside for rookies during first practice on Friday.

"I think we're still trying to extract more from this car. Last race I think we've got a lot out of the car. But there's a little bit more performance in this car and from track to track it's a little bit different again you don't know how strong everyone's gonna be,” he said.

"Ferrari were very strong here last year, so I'm hoping that we can take the learnings that they had last year and find them this weekend. I anticipate the car's gonna feel quite a lot different to what I experienced last year here and the previous years that I've been here.

"I'm missing FP1, so this weekend learn to run straight away pretty much.”