Hamilton shrugs off jeers from passionate Tifosi

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Lewis Hamilton had to brace himself amid a hostile reception from the passionately partisan Italian crowd at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza following Saturday's qualifying session.

The cheers that had greeted Ferrari drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel quickly turned to thunderous boos and jeers once it was Hamilton's turn to speak.

But Hamilton remained unflappable as he saluted his rivals' achievement clinching a front row lockout on Saturday.

"That was an exciting qualifying session!" he said afterwards. "Congratulations to Ferrari, they did a solid job today.

"We've squeezed absolutely everything out of the car today," he insisted. "We've improved the car overnight and I'm really happy with where we were today.

"Everyone in the team is working as hard as they can to make the difference.

"It's obviously incredibly close between us. But they've had the upper-hand all weekend, but we still gave it everything we can.

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"I kind of knew that the Ferraris might just be able to pull out some extra bit of time, but I think second place might have been possible today.

"I lost maybe half a tenth in the last corner and that's the difference between third and second," he admitted. "We gave it everything we could today and will give more tomorrow.

"We've got to fight hard tomorrow. The long run pace of the Ferraris looked quicker than ours, so it's not going to be easy, that's for sure.

"The start will hopefully create an opportunity for us," he suggested. "It's great that Valtteri [Bottas] is right behind me, so we can really apply the pressure on the red cars.

"I've got to study hard tonight to figure out a way how I can get in front of at least one of the Ferraris on the first lap.

"It's incredibly close as I said, as you can see, which is great for the sport and great to see so many fans here," he added among the boos. "Obviously they're all Ferrari fans, but it's still great!"

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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.