Hamilton keen to return to fight in Monza

Lewis Hamilton is keen to be able to fight from the front again at the Italian Grand Prix after taking power unit penalties at Spa-Francorchamps.

Last weekend saw Mercedes take three new power units for Hamilton after reliability problems earlier in the year, leading to a number of grid penalties which saw the defending champion start from 21st on the grid in Belgium. Having recovered to 3rd place in the race - a result which race winner Nico Rosberg says surprised him - Hamilton is looking forward to being able to challenge from the front this weekend at Monza.

"I think those are both normal reactions from my side of things, from his side," Hamilton said. "It obviously was an important race for me and I got what I needed from it and more. It’s not done anything psychologically, it’s been a positive and I’ve moved on from it.

"The penalties are done, the free weekend kind of thing for the opponent is past - I mean, free from battle - and hopefully now I get to fight and it’s a race from here."

Asked if he is worried about having to take a future penalty if Mercedes updates its power unit again, Hamilton says he would not take the upgraded engine.

"No, I’m happy with the phase that we have and I’m happy to run that till the end of the year. If there’s an upgrade I’m not bothered. I can win with the ones I have. Usually upgrades are reliability mostly, or if they aren’t it’s often small steps, so."

With tyre pressures having been a talking point in Belgium and high pressures again expected in Monza, Hamilton says he has been warned not to be critical before the event.

"Unfortunately, I’ve decided to take a sabbatical from talking about tyres, so… There seem to be some emotional people about it, so I unfortunately won’t be able to answer too much more about it, but if the weather’s the same as it was at the last race - obviously we don’t have any high-speed corners - I’m told it may continue, but honestly I have no idea."

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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.