Hamilton: We didn't choose the right tyre strategy

However, the seven-time Formula 1 Champion can be satisfied with the raw pace of his W13 which was evidently better even beating Ferrari on merits, the Reds having their own troubles to deal with.

"It was a good race for me today, although we didn't choose the right tyre strategy in hindsight," Hamilton said in Mercedes' press release post race.

"Nonetheless, to be this close to Red Bull makes me very proud of my team and I'm very grateful to them for the hard work they've put in to keep on moving us forward," he added.

"The race pace generally was quite good, but we were offset on tyres for most of the race. Maybe we should have started on the soft, but obviously we went for the medium, then took the hard to make the one stop work; it looked pretty good on the first stint, but then the Red Bull was just too quick for us - and had the better tyre strategy today as well," the Briton explained.

"Congratulations to Max on his win and it feels great to be back up on the podium here in Mexico. We're getting closer to the front, and we will continue to push.

"The last couple of races, we've taken a big step forward with the car and I hope we will continue like this for the final two," Hamilton concluded.

George Russell, in the other Mercedes had a disappointing race, losing two positions at the start to teammate Hamilton and Red Bull's Sergio Perez, and spent most of the race complaining about his tyres over the ream radio.

"I had a good start but lost two positions in the first lap and our strategy with medium - hard was not the right one in hindsight," Russell reflected.

"I couldn't get the hard tyre working as there was just no grip," he revealed. "Red Bull and Ferrari both started on the softs and we need to understand why the other teams opted for the soft as that looked like the right strategy for this race.

"So that's clearly our learning for today, as we might have been able to get closer, being on the same strategy. Nevertheless, as a team we're making progress and I'm very happy about that.

"I'm intrigued to see how Brazil goes, although I don't think we will be quite as competitive as in Mexico, but still a huge positive takeaway from this weekend and a great job by the whole team," the 24-year-old concluded.

Toto Wolff summed up the race; he said: "Lewis and George did an amazing job today. We discussed whether the soft-hard was a viable strategy, but we didn't really have the soft-medium strategy on our radar going into the race.

"So, we just got it wrong today in hindsight, but we still showed strong performance and secured valuable points. Our performance gap to Red Bull today was small, and we had a good margin to Ferrari.

"However, we need to be careful about jumping to quick conclusions about the latter and wait to see what happens in Brazil," he cautioned.

"Our goals are still to win a race and fight for second in the constructors' championship: we want to demonstrate that our car is fast and the whole team put just so much work into upgrading the car, it would be fantastic for them if we can make it happen for one of the last two remaining races this year," the Austrian maintained.