But Briton aware he's running out of time to overhaul Rosberg; Hamilton expecting Red Bull to challenge Mercedes in Singapore; Rosberg admits he maybe should have attempted to make the chicane at Monza as title leader predicts more "tense" moments
Thursday 18 September 2014 18:02, UK
Lewis Hamilton insists that nothing will change in his approach to the title-defining final race weekends of the season despite his continued status as the ‘chaser’ in the all-Mercedes championship battle.
This weekend’s night-time Singapore GP on the streets of Marina Bay represents the start of the final stretch of six flyaway races that take place across four different continents over the next two months with Nico Rosberg, as has been the case for all but one of the hitherto 13 rounds, holding the crucial points advantage.
The Briton’s victory at the last race in Monza at the expense of his team-mate trimmed Rosberg’s advantage to 22 points, yet Hamilton’s latest attempt at a fightback – he has twice cancelled out 20-point deficits so far this year – is still vulnerable at this closing stage to another race retirement.
However, although fully aware that time is running out in the campaign, Hamilton insists his mindset this weekend is no different to the one he adopted back at March’s season-opener in Melbourne.
“Nothing changes. It’s the same through the whole year – from race one it’s exactly the same until the end of the year,” the 2008 World Champion told reporters on Thursday.
“Of course if you lose out in the first race you still have a long way to go. Going into the first race you don’t want anything to happen the car but afterwards you’re like ‘okay, I’ve still got a long way to go.’ Then you get to the end and you’re kind of ‘jeez, I’m running out of time’. So that’s the only thing that changes.”
Such has been Mercedes’ dominance of the first year of F1’s new turbo era that Hamilton and Rosberg have gone into race weekends usually only needing in reality to worry about beating each other.
But while the duelling pair once more start as favourites for victory in Singapore on Sunday, Hamilton is wary of a renewed threat from reigning World Champions Red Bull – winners at Marina Bay in the last three years - given the slow, corner-laden 5km track layout is bereft of the kind of straights where the Mercedes hybrid engine overwhelms the rest.
“They have a very good downforce package so I would assume that it would be us and them fighting this weekend, particularly because you need as much downforce as you can get at this circuit,” Hamilton remarked in his interview with Sky Sports News HQ.
“Plus they’ve really improved their engine I think from Spa onwards, so they should be a force to be reckoned with this weekend.”
Championship leader, Rosberg, meanwhile, returns to action aiming to recover from the mistake at Monza which handed Hamilton what could be prove a crucial victory in the season.
The German driver was on the front foot on Thursday, countering suggestions that the events of two weeks ago were a major setback in his bid to become World Champion.
“I don’t see [Monza] as such a disaster,” Rosberg insisted in his Thursday press briefing.
“For me, it’s still a very, very pleasurable moment because I’m still aware how fortunate I am to have a car like this. I’ve been in F1 for eight years without a car to win a race. Now, it doesn’t matter where I go – I can be on pole on Saturday if I do the job and win on Sunday. That’s a great feeling.”
However, Rosberg did reveal that he had spent time since mulling whether he should have actually attempted to make Monza's first chicane after outbraking himself in his race-deciding mistake, rather than running straight on through the escape road and around the marker boards to protect his tyres.
“What I did think about is whether my instinctive reaction was the right one then,” he explained to Sky Sports News HQ.
“My team-mate did exactly the same thing towards the end of the race, he also had a big lock-up in exactly the same place without any pressure - so that’s to show also that it really is a difficult braking area, because in the whole year it’s the highest speed and the biggest and longest braking area to the lowest speed afterwards, so it’s quite a challenge – and he though decided to try and make the corner even though the fronts were massively locked up.
“It’s a fine line because the vibration that he got it’s likely he wouldn’t have been able to continue for a long time [on that set of tyres], so it’s risky. So my instinctive reaction was just to go straight on, I don’t know if in hindsight whether it was the right thing to do.”
Nonetheless, with Monza now past history, Rosberg is aiming to make amends with a first career victory under the lights in Singapore with the title leader braced for a continuation of his and Hamilton’s “intense” intra-team duel.
“It’s going to be like that all the time. There’s going to be ups and downs and difficult periods, better periods,” he admitted.
“We’re fortunate because in Toto [Wolff] and Paddy [Lowe] we have really good management, which is important in such a situation, in such an intense battle that we have internally. Good management is going to be crucial I think.
“So that’s good in that sense. It will continue to be intense and hopefully a great battle.”
The 2014 Singapore GP is live only on Sky Sports F1 this weekend, with our coverage beginning with Practice from 10.45am on Friday.
