Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Emotional Hamilton lauds 'beautiful' race

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Lewis Hamilton enjoyed pretty much the perfect race this weekend at Suzuka - once he forced his way past his team mate at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix.

"It was such an amazing race," said Hamilton. "This is a circuit where I can honestly say I've struggled through all the years that I've come here but it's one that I actually love driving.

"I was able to get the balance in the right place, my engineers did an amazing job – Bonno, Ricky and just the whole crew did a great job to get the car, with the short amount of time we had.

"You really want to come here and dominate at a track like this," he continued. "Today was even better than in qualifying and I was able to work on my lines.

"Out in front there it was just beautiful - it's like sailing. Honestly, I wish I could share the feeling with you.

"The tyres were pretty amazing, particularly the last stint. They were the best they’ve felt for a long time. They really felt really good but it must have been how it felt for [Vettel] in the last race.

"Through qualifying, they were good but generally in the race it was getting better and better as the car gets lighter and stuff but I don’t think they were a problem this weekend."

The key moment of the race came when Hamilton was able to stay alongside his team mate Nico Rosberg through turns 1 and 2 at the start of the race, which allowed him to force Rosberg to yield the position.

"I didn't really feel it was all that close. - the inside line is the inside line, so it was my corner.

"Basically I was understeering and running out of grip so I imagine Nico ran off the road because that's what happens when you're on the outside."

While Rosberg dropped back as far as fourth place and spent the rest of the afternoon recovering lost ground, Hamilton never looked back and continued to pull away from his pursuers for an emphatic victory.

Victory this weekend means that Hamilton has now matched the 41 Grand Prix wins recorded by his idol Aryton Senna, although it's taken him one more race to get to that tally.

"Knowing that this would be the race that I would equal Aytron, who won here and who had quite an interesting here - quite an emotional day," he admitted.

"But I'm not a teary guy so I'm honestly just full of joy and happiness and life and really grateful for all the people that helped me get where I today, and this team - without them I wouldn't be here.

RACE REPORT: Hamilton eases to dominant Suzuka victory

AS IT HAPPENED: Japanese Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.