I had quite a good start, [but with] four people abreast in front of me I decided to take it easy. I got a few [cars] in turn five and someone (Vettel) going into turn seven. I was ahead but I lost the back end and corrected it and went over the kerb, which I don't see as cheating. Rules are rules, [but] I don't think I did anything [wrong].
I went into the corner believing I was ahead on the outside, and couldn't turn-in on the guy otherwise we would have crashed, so I took a wider line. Then I lost the back on the marbles and went over the kerb and continued. I don't believe I overtook him by going over the kerb. I overtook him before that, as a result [of which] I was forced wide.
Despite having endured his third failure to score from the first eight races of a season that many had tipped would be his, Hamilton is insistent he is not succumbing to the public and media pressure with his 2007 love affair with the notoriously fickle tabloids now but a very distant memory and nor to all the extra-curricular' incentives that go hand-in-hand with being one of the fastest racing drivers in the world.
There have been numerous suggestions that the 23-year-old has let his focus drift after being seduced by the sport's myriad glamorous temptations, amidst appearances at glitzy film premieres and suggestions that at one point earlier this year he was dating either actress and singer Dannii Minogue, Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger or Miss World runner-up Vivian Burkhardt or possibly even all three at the same time. It was also incorrectly claimed in the Magny-Cours paddock that he had blown £200,000 on a personalised number plate.
I can take constructive criticism, but I don't read any of it, British newspapers quote the Stevenage-born star as having underlined. You hear about [the media reports], but what difference should that make to me, because I am doing my job and I am enjoying myself.
