I’m not thinking about double points, says Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton says he is not thinking about the possibility of losing the World Championship to Nico Rosberg on double points – and says he’s just focussed in winning the next two races.

“You can’t be thinking about it,” he said after his US GP success. “It’s a fact that that is a possibility, but that’s not something that I’m willing to accept, so I’m going to be pushing as hard as I can. I want to win the next races, I want to get as many points as I can. It’s not something I can be thinking of, what happens if this happens in the future? If we lived our life with ‘what if’ maybe you won’t achieve what you set out to achieve.

Regarding his Austin win, he said: “I feel quite good all round. Practice was really good, qualifying was weak – there were two reasons, it wasn’t just the brakes, my driving lines weren’t actually the best. I studied hard last night and fixed that today, and it worked really well. On the race day since I was eight years old I’ve known how I can race, and that still was the same today. My dad always says drive like you stole it! That’s what I do.”

Hamilton says he is better able to deal with title showdowns than in the past.

“I think I’m definitely in a different place to back then. Part of that is just experience, and part of that is just getting older, and having those experiences of winning and losing. I kind of feel that I understand the approach that I need. There’s no real special recipe, or anything like that. Just going to work my arse off for the next two races and try to improve.

“There’s stuff that I can still take out of today. Today is not just a win, there’s a lot of things that I can take out of today in terms of how I drove, the things that I should have done perhaps for qualifying that I didn’t pick up on, which were visible from previous years, small things like that, I have to make sure I pick up on that. It’s just always trying to make sure that you leave no stone unturned, so that after the race you can say you did everything you could.”

Asked about Rosberg’s mental state he said: “I don’t know. It’s something I’m really concerned about. I don’t think about it, I’m just focussing on my job and not thinking about Nico’s.”