Lewis Hamilton will be SNUBBED by fans at Mexican Grand Prix – this is not right

The US Grand Prix proved a TV hit at the weekend with 5.5million tuning in to watch the Austin race, the sport’s biggest UK audience in nearly three years.

The action was shown on both Channel 4 and Sky Sports, and courted a bigger combined audience than the X Factor on ITV.

The race in Mexico however, will be screened exclusively by Sky, with a live viewership likely to be nearer one million.

That’s despite Mercedes star Lewis Hamilton needing to finish only seventh to wrap up the fifth world title of his career.

And it appears unlikely to get better anytime soon. Channel 4 will continue to show highlights packages next year, but they will only have one race, the British Grand Prix, live.

It means in Britain only Sky Sports subscribers will be able to catch the races live – despite one of their greatest sportsmen being in action.

Hamilton, 33, refused to put the blame on Mercedes after he revealed a car problem contributed to his failure in sewing up the world championship in America.

After he secured a brilliant pole, it was expected that Hamilton would be crowned champion in Austin, Texas, but a strategy error by Mercedes denied him a shot at victory.

The water pump on Hamilton’s car was also replaced before the race after a leak had been identified on team-mate Valtteri Bottas’ machinery.

A set-up issue, when his vehicle was hastily put back together, also came to light after the race, with the Briton saying it affected his performance.

Hamilton has asked to be kept in the loop of Mercedes’ analysis by his race engineer, Pete Bonnington, before he heads south of the border.

“You saw that the car was in a million pieces on Sunday morning, so that was not ideal for the race,” Hamilton said.

“If we didn’t have a morning like that our race outcome would have potentially been different.

“We had another problem which cost us time and the issue I was having with the car was the biggest outlier. Given I had this deficit I was having to push that much harder to recover the time I lost.

“I will get an email update from Bono and then we will sit down on Thursday in Mexico and go through it all.

“No one is to blame. We take the blame together and we give ourselves a kick up the backside and realise that we have got to keep working and keep pushing. We will come back stronger.”