Formula 1 title fight heads to Hamilton's stomping grounds
Lewis Hamilton says he's hoping to have a "real race" with teammate Nico Rosberg at Silverstone after they each suffered a problem in the last two races at Silverstone.
Hamilton had a tire failure in 2013, while Rosberg retired from last year's British Grand Prix with a gearbox problem.
"It's going to be a very hard weekend for sure," said Hamilton. "Nico's going to be very quick. I can't say who's going to be our main competitor this weekend - it could be Williams, it could be Ferrari. I think this weekend is going to be down to getting a good qualifying, and really just extracting the most from it in the race.
"The last couple of years I've not really done spectacularly in qualifying, and one year it's been difficult for Nico with a car issue and one year it's been an issue with me. So I'm hoping we'll have a race where we can actually just fight and have a real race."
As for Rosberg, he's entirely focused on shrinking the gap between himself and Hamilton. He currently faces a 10-point deficit.
"It's important for me to keep closing the gap to him," Rosberg said. "And of course I'm going to try and do it here. It's a good period for me in the season now, and I want to try and keep that going. He's still 10 points ahead, and I need to keep digging at that way very quickly. Ten points is nothing if you look at the length of the season, so the chances are really good."
Rsoberg has won three of the last four races, with his latest triumph coming two weeks ago in Austria.
"It was a great weekend for me, for sure yes, especially because it was one of those that was not so difficult. And that was great to see, to really just be quicker in the race all the way through was cool. And especially it was great because that was the area where I needed to slightly work on after last year, race craft, and I made a nice step there. That's been important for me to see."
Despite losing out to Rosberg in that race, Hamilton says that he does not feel a need to have to bounce back: "I feel really happy with my performance over the weekends, more so than perhaps in other years, where I've perhaps been unhappy with the performance at some point. The last couple of races I've had some ups and downs, the last one the start made a huge difference.
"The good thing is that from the mishaps, from things that happen, we study and analyze them and often fix them or make improvements to make sure they don't happen again. And particularly after the last race Nico simulated what happened for me at the start in the car, and found a serious issue that could have affected us this weekend. That's now been rectified and improved."
