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Hamilton shrugs off rivalry with Rosberg

david tremayne Lewis Hamilton (in photo) goes to Canada this weekend intent on building on the fourth-place finish in Monaco…

david tremayne
Lewis Hamilton (in photo) goes to Canada this weekend intent on building on the fourth-place finish in Monaco which put him back in the points after a disastrous Spanish Grand Prix a fortnight earlier.
The Monaco result was a much-needed fillip after he could finish only 12th in Barcelona, but Hamilton was overshadowed again there as his team-mate Nico Rosberg outqualified him and went on to score Mercedes’ first victory of the season on the streets of the Principality.
On the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, where he registered his first grand prix victory for McLaren back in 2007 at the age of 22, and where he won again in 2010 and 2012, Hamilton hopes to recapture the edge that has been missing recently.
`There’s a really good feeling in the team at the moment following Nico’s win in Monaco and we’re continuing to work hard to make sure we have the potential for more victories this season. Going with the confidence that the team won the last race is a big encouragement. It obviously shows we have got great pace, the car is in a great place and we have got potential for more wins.’
But Hamilton, who lies fourth in the overall standings, 45 points behind leader Sebastian Vettel, also acknowledged that the big talking point of 2013 has been his inability of late to beat Rosberg, who has been on pole position for the last three races.
`I expected him to be competitive,’ Hamilton said. `I expected him to be even stronger than he has been simply because he has been in the team for years. It’s his home.
You can see when you are in the engineering debriefs that he is 100 per cent comfortable with the car because he’s been driving it for years. I expected him to be as competitive as he has been, especially with experience of racing him for many years.’
After a slow start of his own, Jenson Button can have high hopes of emulating Hamilton’s win last year in the McLaren.
the independent

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