Hamilton predicts four-stop Mexican GP

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes could be pushed into making as many as four stop at the Mexican Grand Prix after struggling with tyre wear in practice.

Many teams suffered with graining during Friday's on-track action and Mexico has typically been a two-stop race, at odds with most venues which teams can negotiate with a single pit-stop.

Harsh tyre wear may of course lead to a sluggish start to the race as teams try to preserve the life of their rubber, as happened recently at the Singapore GP.

If the opening stint of the race is not so pedestrian, however, Hamilton says a chaotic 71 laps could ensue.

He said: "It's pretty useless here with the tyres, it feels like we're going to be doing a three or four-stop kind of thing. This place is so aggressive on the tyres.

"As the tyres are starting to grain, it gets a lot easier to lock the tyres up. One lock up on these things and they're like 50p coins. It's rattling your teeth out.

"Fortunately [on Friday] I didn't have any of that, I'll try to avoid that.

"We have massive downforce but low air density so you're just sliding around a lot. It'll be interesting. We've got another DRS zone, so I hope that helps us get closer for the racing."

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