Lewis Hamilton under fire ahead of British GP

A defiant Lewis Hamilton hit out at his critics after picking up a penalty on the first lap of the French Grand Prix.

The British F1 star said: “You can keep on giving me penalties, do whatever you want to do. I’ll keep battling.”

Trackside’s Keith Collantine looks at another difficult day for Hamilton with his home race coming up next.

The last two races have been the least successful of Hamilton’s short Formula 1 career. In his 25 race starts it’s the first time he’s gone two races without scoring.

And the next round is the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, where his fans will expect him to perform.

Yesterday he faced a difficult race having to start from 13th on the grid. He was relegated ten places after hitting Kimi Raikkonen’s car in the pits two weeks ago.

And within a few corners it had all gone wrong again for the British driver.

While passing Sebastian Vettel’s Toro Rosso on the first lap he cut across the inside of a corner. The stewards deemed he had gained an illegal advantage and gave him a ‘drive-through’ penalty. Had Hamilton given Vettel the place back, he likely would have gone unpunished.

That left Hamilton near-last and he was only able to rise to tenth place – out of the points – after 70 laps of the Magny-Cours circuit.

Afterwards Hamilton revealed his anger at the penalty. He said: “I got past someone fairly going into turn seven, I was ahead but I lost the back end and corrected it. I went over the kerb, which I don’t see as cheating. But rules are rules.”

Hamilton has had a string of incidents this year. In Malaysia he and team mate Heikki Kovalainen were moved back five places on the grid for holding up other drivers in qualifying.

In Bahrain he destroyed his race by crashing into former team mate Fernando Alonso. The came the astonishing incident at Montreal two weeks ago where he failed to see a red light in the pits in time and ran into Raikkonen.

McLaren boss Ron Dennis gave air to his frustrations at yet another penalty for his team. He said: “There’s no point saying anything else. Draw your own conclusions.” Kovalainen was also penalised in qualifying, again for delaying another car.

With Hamilton facing the pressure to perform in front of a sell-out home crowd for the British Grand Prix, he hit out at what he believes is unfair criticism of his driving.

He said: “That’s what they do: they build you up and then they break you down, but they can’t break me.

“There’s a lot of **** coming out in the papers. I’m here to race and I don’t want all this stuff. But I’m very strong mentally and my belief in my own ability is stronger than ever and there’s nothing that can break me.”

Hamilton is now ten points adrift of championship leader Felipe Massa with ten races left.

• During the French Grand Prix weekend Hamilton denied he had spent £200,000 on a personalised number plate.

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