Lewis Hamilton remains realistic about his chances of securing the title this season, admitting the Red Bulls will be difficult to beat following their dominance in qualifying and Sebastian Vettel’s win.
The McLaren driver could only manage fifth on Sunday following a disappointing grid position, partly to blame on a yellow flag during Q3. However, Red Bull look to be on form and Hamilton knows beating them will be hard.
“I’m quite a realistic person so I know my situation, but I’ll never give up,” he said after the race. “We’ve had some strong results and Jenson [Button] did good job today and with better qualifying we would have had a better result. But the Red Bulls will be tough to beat.”
Hamilton has however closed the gap to the front by ten points thanks to Fernando Alonso’s non-finish and believes that was all he could do thanks to a poor set-up choice.
“It wasn’t particularly exciting but I think I got everything I could from the car,” he added. “It’s just a little bit strange, the car’s behaviour this weekend, I had this understeer through qualifying and today was the same. I thought with the wind direction it would change but it started off the same as qualifying, so I was falling back from the grid and wasn’t quick enough. Then all of a sudden I had this thud on the rear on lap 20 or something and all of a sudden the car started turning and after that I was able to push. I don’t know why that was but we’ll try to find out why.”
Hamilton now sits 42 points behind leader Alonso, 38 behind Vettel and five behind Kimi Raikkonen with five races remaining.
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