Flying in the face of critics who claim he has taken his eye off the ball over the course of a torrid past few weeks,
Lewis Hamilton insists he has been driving better than ever in the last two grands prix – despite failing to pick up so much as a single point.
The young Briton was dominating the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal until he crashed into the back of chief title rival
Kimi Raikkonen under a red light in the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve's pit-lane, removing both from the action on the spot.
That earned him a ten-place grid penalty for the next outing at Magny-Cours in France, where he subsequently picked up another penalty for having been deemed to have gained an advantage when he shot off the track immediately after overtaking
Scuderia Toro Rosso's
Sebastian Vettel, for which he said he was ‘unfortunate'. He went on to finish in a lowly tenth place, consequently falling to fourth in the drivers' standings and enabling Raikkonen's
Ferrari team-mate
Felipe Massa to open up a ten-point advantage over him at the top of the table.
Ahead of his home appearance in the British Grand Prix at
Silverstone, however, the McLaren-Mercedes ace has come out fighting, rebuffing any suggestions his performances have taken a nose-dive and stressing that the pressure of a nation that expects him to deliver the crown back to Britain for the first time since 1996 is not getting to him.
“I haven't had any lack of concentration,” he told
The Associated Press. “If anything, I've been more in-form in the last two races than I ever have before.
“Bang, bang, two penalties. What can you do about that? I'm not putting all the pressure on myself, saying I've got to do it all this weekend, because that's not realistic.”
