Lewis Hamilton has been called up by the FIA to take part in Thursday’s official press conference ahead of the United States Grand Prix, two weeks after the Mercedes driver’s behaviour in the same presser triggered a rift between him and part of the media.
Hamilton spent most of the session on his phone in Suzuka and posted an image on Snapchat which read: "This s**t is killing me".
When asked about what he was doing, the triple world champion replied: “It’s quite funny, just some snaps of us drivers, it’s quite funny. That’s about it.
“Hey man, we’ve been doing this a long long time and it’s the same each time so got to keep adding new things to it.”
It did not take long before Hamilton received a lot of flak from some quarters, notably in the British press, as journalists saw his attitude as a “lack of respect” to them but also to the Japanese fans.
The 31-year-old quickly defended his use of Snapchat, tweeting that “it was meant to be fun and not at all disrespectful”.
Two days later, Hamilton refused to take questions from written press in Japan and simply walked off Mercedes’s post-qualifying press conference in protest of the coverage his actions has received.
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