Lewis Hamilton had his loaned Mercedes impounded by Melbourne police after apparently doing burnouts as he left the Albert Park circuit on Friday night.
McLaren later issued a statement under Hamilton’s name – but without any reference to team or sponsors – in which he apologised for the incident.
Hamilton said: “This evening, I was driving in an over-exuberant manner and, as a result, was stopped by the police. What I did was silly, and I want to apologise for it.”
The incident is sure to be a focus of media attention and put Hamilton under the media spotlight for the rest of the weekend.
Local police may have been a little jumpy because this morning a famous Melbourne restaurant owner was killed in a motorcycle accident just yards away from where Lewis was stopped.
Adam Cooper F1 
Lewis sure does have to apologise a lot. But then he apparently ‘only gets stronger’ every time he does.
Maybe that’s just how he trains, he does something stupid, then apologises, and gets stronger from it. Has any driver in the history of F1 had to issue so many apologies in such a short amount of time as Lewis?
There’s a great quote from Brazil 2007 when Lewis ‘accidentally’ balked Kimi in qualifying (twice).
Anne Giuntini got stuck in (surely nothing to do with her then Renault partner)
“Do you think you can do everything you want and then you just apologise — is that the way it works in formula one?”.
Seems she had Lewis’ number a loonnnng time ago.
Is the police certain it wasn’t Dave Ryan driving ? Oh wait ….. we used up that card last year…
Don’t worry. Lewis always learns from his mistakes. Soon he’ll be telling us how it “made him stronger”.
Let’s hang him.
I mean an F1 driver doing a wheel spin out of a car park should be a hanging offence shouldn’t it?
Maybe we should imprison his family too, I mean if he did that then surely they could be capable of such atrocities and we should stop them before it’s too late.
Pathetic nanny nonsense. None of their business that for about a century already and virtually everywhere healthy youngsters have been known to do a bit of totally harmless wheel spin.