Hamilton: "At the moment I'm punching below my weight"

Lewis Hamilton says that so far in 2018, he has been punching below his weight. The four-time world champion won his first race of the year in Azerbaijan two weeks ago, and as a result, took the lead in the championship.

However, the Briton admitted in Barcelona that he hasn't thought for a second since leaving Baku that he's now leading the championship. While acknowledging that there is a long way to go in the season, Hamilton says his current form won't be enough to win him his fifth title.

"Since the last race I have not thought for one second that I’m leading the world championship," he said. "There’s a long way to go. Imagine if I got excited now knowing that we still have all the problems and things moving ahead. It doesn’t mean really anything.

"What’s important is where you are at the end of the year. If we happen this weekend to have got on top of the issues that we have with the car and we start to be more consistent then I can be a lot happier because then I know I can continue to punch at or above my weight. But at the moment I’m punching below my weight and that’s not sufficient to win the world championship."

And he says that he is slightly more confident than twelve months ago with his Mercedes car, as the 2017 W08 was branded a 'diva': "I would say we were a little bit more confident last year in starting on the right foot as we understood the car a little bit better already by this point.

"There’s still a lot of unknowns in this season right now. We’re still learning and hoping. For example this weekend the tyres are the biggest contributor to the struggles that we’ve had so I’m hoping that this weekend we don’t have them but I have no idea.

"And they’ve just changed the tyres again for the blistering issues we had in testing so it could go from a two-stop to a one-stop or maybe a three-stop I have no idea what it’s going to do. But I do hope it’s not a one-stop because that’s not very exciting."

Fergal Walsh