GreenBkk.com Formula 1 | Hamilton eyes Italian GP glory

Hamilton eyes Italian GP glory

Sunday 4th September 2011

Lewis Hamilton has moved on from his Belgium mishaps and insists he is completely focused on claiming the victory at next weekend's Italian GP.

Hamilton was involved a crash-strewn weekend at Spa with his McLaren MP4-26 taking a hit on not one but two occasions.

The first was at the end of Q2 when Pastor Maldonado side-swiped as he came flying past on his in-lap while the second, with more dire consequences, was in Sunday's race.

Hamilton and Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi collided, putting the McLaren driver into a spin and into the barriers. The Brit suffered a hard knock but thankfully was quickly released from the medical centre without any long-term effects.

The Brit's DNF saw him fall to fifth in the Drivers' standings, leaving him 113 points behind Championship leader Sebastian Vettel.

And although the general consensus is that Vettel has the title in the bag, Hamilton is still anticipating a "very closely matched" race.

"Last year, I won at Spa and failed to finish at Monza. For this year, I guess I'm looking to reverse that sequence!" Hamilton said.

"I've already moved on from my non-finish in Belgium and I'm really looking forward to returning to Italy, a place where I spent a lot of time racing karts: it's a country I really love.

"I think we go into the weekend feeling pretty optimistic. I've never won at Monza and I'd love to get a good result this year.

I'm particularly looking forward to qualifying, because I think DRS will make a huge difference to our lap times, and I really want to get the maximum out of the car in quali - and then look forward to a strong race, of course.

"With unlimited use in quali, and those four long straights, I think qualifying's going to be pretty intense: we'll be 20km/h faster at four key points of the circuit, so our quali times are going to be much faster than in the race. That should be pretty exciting.

"For the race, you'll also need the downforce, though, because you'll want to be quick enough out of the second Lesmo and Parabolica to be in with a chance of challenging for position down the following straight.

"I think things are set for another very closely matched race - I'm really looking forward to it."

Credit: ESPN STAR (www.espnstar.com)