Lewis Hamilton won his fifth F1 world championship

Lewis Hamilton has won his fifth F1 world championship, making him the joint second most successful driver of all time.

The 33-year-old becomes only the third man in history to win five world titles. He matches the haul of the Argentine legend Juan Manuel Fangio and is two behind all-time record holder Michael Schumacher.

It was a difficult race for the Mercedes driver, who battled tyre problems throughout, but his finishing position just off the podium, in fourth, was more than enough to seal the biggest achievement of an illustrious career.

Hamilton needed only to finish seventh at Sunday's Mexican Grand Prix to become champion, even if Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel had won - but the German could manage only second place behind the dominant Max Verstappen, despite a valiant and strong race.

At the end of the race, Hamilton pushed his car through a series of celebratory "doughnut" spins in the track's stadium section, before waving to the capacity 135,000 crowd.

Hamilton said: "It is a very strange feeling right now. This was won through a lot of hard work through a lot of races. I am so grateful for all the hard work, for everyone who has been a part of it.

Hamilton's achievement this year will surely go down as his greatest so far. He has maintained a level of excellence not only way out of reach of his only real rival, Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, but at a consistency Hamilton himself has not achieved before.

The scale of the accomplishment becomes clearer when one considers that he has brought the season to a premature close with two races to go despite not having the fastest car the majority of the time.

The raw statistics of the 2018 season tell only part of the story. Hamilton has won nine races and taken nine pole positions; Vettel five of each. The basic maths of that equation explain why Hamilton is already champion, with the Brazilian and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix still to come.