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Hamilton 'more motivated than ever'

Lewis Hamilton: "I come here today more motivated than ever" © Sutton Images

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Lewis Hamilton says there is no guarantee that his pre-summer break form will carry over into the Belgian Grand Prix, but claims to be "more motivated than ever" ahead of this weekend's race.

Hamilton signed off the first half of the season with a victory at the Hungaroring and heads into the final nine races with one of the fastest cars on the grid and a 48-point gap to championship leader Sebastian Vettel. But despite his recent return to form, Hamilton says nothing is guaranteed ahead of this weekend's race.

"It's the same every year, you have one [good] race and people get excited and then you have a bad race and negative things are said," he explained. "I'm not focused on what is trying to be said. I'm just focusing on the job I have and I've been training hard over the break, which is very different to the last six years when I've taken it as a real holiday.

"I've been training six days a week and trying to centre myself, and I come here today more motivated than ever. It's a great feeling knowing we have a car we can compete with and knowing that we can still fight those guys."

After qualifying on pole in Hungary, Hamilton said it would be a miracle if he won the race but went on to take a convincing victory. The change in tyre construction for the Hungarian Grand Prix led to the conclusion that Pirelli's modifications had benefited Mercedes' degradation, but Hamilton was not willing to put too much stock in that idea.

"I hope that continues the way it did in the last race. We weren't expecting that when we put those tyres on for it to go the way it did. I still come into this weekend not knowing what these tyres are going to offer me. It's an unknown with these tyres, you never know because they are always changing and sometimes it's hard to switch them on and sometimes it's easy to switch them on and they grain in different ways... I don't put much thought into it and I let the engineers think about it more and I just try to get the best out of them."

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