Last night shortly after recording the fastest laptime around the Melbourne circuit in his McLaren-Mercedes racing car, Lewis was caught driving in “over-exuberant” manner on the local Victoria roads in a Mercedes road car.

Hamilton apparently performed a burnout and then power-oversteered his 2010 silver Mercedes along Lakeside Drive at around 9:15pm last night – in front of a local Police van, which subsequently pulled him over. Oops..

He will be charged with improper use of a vehicle on the road after the Mercedes sports car he was driving was towed to a police pound, where it will be held for 48 hours under ‘anti-hoon’ laws.

The Senior Constable who caught the ex-F1 champion said that “..he stopped right away and was extremely co-operative.”

“It would have been fair to say he was fairly disappointed with the incident,” he said.

Hamilton was interviewed and routinely breath-tested and was said to be ‘visibly upset’ that his car had been towed away – he is understood to have told policeman at the scene that he was worried that the incident might damage his reputation.

Damage his reputation? I can’t imagine any of his fans or enthusiasts would expect anything less from an F1 driver, what do you think?

Lewis made a statement late on Friday evening to say that he was sorry for what he considered to be a ‘silly’ mistake. “This evening, I was driving in an over-exuberant manner and, as a result, was stopped by the police,” said Hamilton.

“What I did was silly, and I want to apologise for it.”