Lewis Hamilton heads into the Mexico GP weekend with a twelve points gap to championship leader Max Verstappen after his second place in Austin, and he isn't confident that he'll be able to close it up on Sunday, as, in his own words, the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is a "Red Bull track".

The Austrian team surely has good memories here, where Verstappen got back-to-back wins in 2017 and 2018, and secured the pole position in 2019, but then received a grid penalty and ended the race in P6, leaving the victory to Hamilton.

“Well, last year [2019] they were quite a bit quicker than us so yeah, you’d have to say that this is a Red Bull track, but we have had success here in the past,” the Mercedes driver said in today's press conference.

"We did win here last time but that was only because Max made a mistake and got a penalty, otherwise, they were much quicker than us. So we expect that they will be very strong this weekend.”

The World Champion also talked about the "exciting" fight for the championship, and the different mechanical strategies between the title contenders, highlighting the importance of the upgrades introduced by the rivals:

"The fact is we haven’t brought an upgrade for a long time, since Silverstone obviously. We know that they were bringing upgrades well past that and they generally have a little bit of extra performance on the rear end of their car."

"It seems like in the hotter places they seem to be doing a little bit better than us and this is just been a track they’ve been very, very strong at, like Budapest for example, where they’ve been strong in the past too."

However, the inequal development isn't an excuse to surrender, but an encouragement to make even better use of every element that can help towards his eight, record-breaking, title:

“It doesn’t mean that we can’t be strong this weekend. We will find out when we get out there but of course, it means we have to extract absolutely everything and pushing absolutely to the limit, trying to leave no stone unturned, no performance on the table which can happen. We're just trying to make sure that we cover every area possible," he reinforced.

Hamilton was also asked about his Team Principal Toto Wolff's interview.

Wolff has suggested to the Daily Mail that his rivalry with Verstappen could get infamous, if the championship is still in contention in the last round, like it happened in 1989 between Senna and Prost, and lead to hard racing episodes, or even crash attempts.

The British driver strongly denied he would do such a thing: "We’ve never won a championship in that way; I have never won a championship in that way and would never want to."

"So, that’s from my perspective, my point of view: I’m here to win in the right way and that’s through sheer skill and determination and hard work.”

He continued highlighting the importance of "losing well", satisfied with what was done and the idea that everyone did their best:

"You know how I’ve won my championships in the past and I always want to win it the right way. If you’re going to lose it, you lose it the right way also: with dignity and knowing that you’re giving it you’re all and you’ve done things the right way and you’ve worked as hard as you could. It’s all you can do, is give it your all and work as hard as you can with the team. If it doesn’t work out, you live to fight another day,” he concluded.