Lewis Hamilton says it has “generally been a smooth sailing year” for Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, as the Briton enters this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix one point adrift of his title rival.
Rosberg won the opening four races on the trot, while Hamilton suffered poor starts and reliability issues that left him 43 points in arrears in the championship.
The German, who also had to cope with technical glitches of his own, still had the same edge after the Spanish Grand Prix where the two Mercedes took each other on the first lap.
Since Monaco however, Hamilton has won four of five races and nearly made up his entire deficit. When put to him that Rosberg claimed “I’ve had the best season of all drivers so far” in Thursday’s FIA press conference, Hamilton replied: “He said that? It’s been a smooth year for him and not had any huge issues.
“It has generally been a smooth sailing year for him. I expect him to say that and he has been in the lead all year long so he would say that. If any of us had been in the lead all year long would probably say that. Times do change.”
“We all have to find positives somewhere and that is a positive for him having the lead. But on my side I think I have some very good positives.”
Having stolen Rosberg’s thunder in recent grand prix weekends, Hamilton now looks to extend the positive momentum and knock his rival off his perch to head the standings come the summer break.
“The last two races, when you go from one strength to another, there’s an incredibly powering feeling and motivating and inspiring, the last race was just still the greatest week that I’ve had as long as I can remember.”
“Closing that deficit and having the pace I have now and been able to utilise in the past few races and I also plan to utilise in the next couple of races.”
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