A repentant Lewis Hamilton said suspended McLaren team manager Dave Ryan told him to lie to stewards at last weekend's season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

Describing the subsequent furore as the worst thing he had experienced in his life, Formula One's youngest champion apologised yesterday to the stewards and fans for his behaviour and assured them it would never happen again.

"I was misled," the Briton told an extraordinary news conference at the Malaysian Grand Prix, a day after he was stripped of the third place he had been awarded at last weekend's season-opening race in Melbourne.

"I'm not a liar, I'm not a dishonest person, I'm a team player. And every time I've been informed to do something, I've done it.

"This time I realise that it was a huge mistake and I am learning from it," he said.

The stewards had ruled that Hamilton and the team had been "deliberately misleading" at the first enquiry that demoted Toyota's Jarno Trulli from third to 12th for illegally overtaking Hamilton behind the safety car.

Hamilton had denied being asked by McLaren to let Trulli past, despite team radio and media comments suggesting the opposite.

Sounding hoarse and subdued, the 24-year-old said he had "never felt so bad".

"While waiting for the stewards I was instructed and misled by my team manager to withhold information and that's what I did," he explained.