Lewis Hamilton promises to keep focus with fifth F1 world title in sight

Lewis Hamilton insists he will not relax in his pursuit for a the Formula One title, despite victory at the Japanese Grand Prix making a fifth world championship a near certainty.

The British driver has won five of the last six races held in Austin, so will be targeting victory in the next round in the USA, or at the very least in the one after in Mexico, after a superb mid-season gave him a commanding title lead of 67 points. His title rival Sebastian Vettel, in contrast, has admitted he hopes Ferrari can at best rescue some pride from the remaining four races.

Hamilton won at Suzuka after a dominant weekend and an untroubled run from pole to flag. Vettel could manage only sixth from eighth on the grid, in effect ending his challenge. Hamilton will take the championship at the next round in Austin if he wins and Vettel fails to finish in second place.

The Mercedes driver secured such a strong lead after a sequence of races where he and his team have repeatedly proved to have the edge on Vettel and Ferrari. Hamilton won unexpectedly in Germany and Hungary and then after defeat in Belgium came back with a bravura performance at Monza. He has won all three races since, making it a run of six from seven but despite the advantage he insisted his approach will not change as he closes out the title fight.

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“I am very strict on not being complacent with our position,” he said. “There are 100 points available and I know we have to keep doing the job we are doing now until the last flag.

“That is the goal. From past experiences, so much can happen. I will be at the factory this week, and the focus will be on extracting as much as we can from this car because we can always improve.”

It is an understandable mental approach from the defending champion who admitted in Japan that he was drawing on youthful experiences familiar to many schoolchildren. “It is a marathon and not a sprint,” he said. “I have been in races when I was a kid doing cross-country and I have just run out of stamina to keep going. We have good stamina this year.”

For Vettel and Ferrari, who have shared a series of costly errors and misjudgements this season, it seems clear after Suzuka that the title has gone. Vettel joined the team in 2015 and last year signed a new contract to take him to the end of 2020, unsurprisingly he tried to take the positives from what will likely be his second consecutive runner-up finish behind Hamilton for the Scuderia.

“We have great potential in this team,” he said. “The last weeks have been tough for us, overall we could be in a better place and that is for a reason. We know that we have a lot of potential to unleash and we need to work and dig a little deeper. For now we want to prove that the last few races are not what we can deliver.”