- Mercedes
Winning easily is dull - Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton does not want a period of easy domination at the top of the sport and is expecting his 2014 title rival Nico Rosberg to come back stronger next season.
Hamilton was officially crowned champion on Friday night after picking up his trophy at the FIA Gala Awards in Doha. After a dominant year for Mercedes, Hamilton has been tipped to emulate the title-winning prowess of Michael Schumacher in the early 2000s or Sebastian Vettel at the start of this decade, but the new champion says he wants his title battles to remain close in coming years.
"I don't think you ever want to have it easy," he said. "You always want to have a fight. Easy championships, I don't know, they're just not as… you want that climax.
"Obviously it was a climax going into the last race, obviously Nico's car had an issue, so then from halfway through the race the pressure was different to having to defend in the race. But still, throughout the whole year, just trying to keep your cool, stay focused and all those kinds of things. It was great. I'm just grateful for the opportunity to have had the championships I've had.
"This one definitely feels sweeter than the first but that's probably just because I'm older and because of what I've gone through to get to this one and the decisions that I've taken and all those kinds of things. For the next one - if there is another one - at least in the championships I'm going into I want to fight as high as possible and try to work on and improve on the things that are not strong enough and could be better but overall it's been an incredible year and I've been very blessed to have a great team around me."
Hamilton is confident he will get a chance to defend his championship in a competitive car - a luxury he did not have in 2009 when he was unable to defend his first title.
"Going into next season, you're hoping that you'll be competitive again, you hope you'll have a chance to fight for the championship again. The good thing about this period of time in Formula One is that when I won the championship in 2008, the following year we had a year like this with some new rules and regulations and as a team we didn't do a good job to adapt to that, so I didn't have a chance to fight to keep my championship. Next year will be an evolution of this year's car so I'm hoping that we'll be at least able to fight.
"Nico's going to come back stronger and I'll have to make sure I come back even stronger to stay ahead of him. You know Daniel Ricciardo has been doing an amazing job. It will be interesting to see what Fernando [Alonso] does in his car. It's very difficult to know but I don't particularly care who's behind! You don't car do you? You just want to look ahead!"
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