Hamilton shrugs off grid girl criticism

Lewis Hamilton has shrugged off criticism of his celebrations on the Chinese Grand Prix podium after spraying a grid girl with champagne.

Following the race, Hamilton sprayed a Chinese model in the side of the head as he celebrated his victory, but received a negative response from some observers in China as well as from the feminist group Object. The model, named as Liu Siying, attempted to downplay the incident this week.

“It lasted for only one or two seconds, and I did not think too much about it at all,” Ms Liu told Shanghai Daily.  “I think some foreign media are more sensitive about the topic compared to local media. I was just told by my employer to stand on the podium, and that’s what I did.”

Hamilton was questioned about the reaction on Thursday in Bahrain, but says he is not overly concerned by some of the criticism of his actions.

"I hadn't really heard too much about it until today," Hamilton said. "Obviously when you arrive you get a debrief as to what has happened during the week, so fortunately for me it has not overshadowed my week. Ultimately it was a great weekend, and generally my actions are through excitement.

"This is Formula One, the pinnacle of motor sport and I'd just won a grand prix for the team. You should see it was a kind of a fun thing. I would never ever intend to disrespect or try to embarrass someone like that. I don't really know the reasons why people have brought those things up.

"This is a sport so many love, and the more we show character and fun it reflects how great this sport is, and that's what I try to do. It hasn't affected me, and it's nice to know the lady kind of wrote in. If she had wrote in and said she was really unhappy then perhaps I would be more concerned."

Click here to look under the skin of the front-running 2015 cars 

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter