After getting two successive wins in Brazil and Qatar, Lewis Hamilton now wants to end Red Bull’s championship dream in Jeddah.
For the last seven years, Mercedes has remained the undisputed victors of the F1 championship. In 2021, Lewis Hamilton intends to increase the streak by another year.
Though his biggest challenge on Red Bull, their recent defeats in Brazil and Qatar have brought them backfoot. With the competition moving to Saudi Arabia, Hamilton is entirely focused on denying his rivals the ultimate glory.
“The last two weeks have been fantastic, just amazing,” Hamilton told Sky Sports. “[But] there’s no time for celebrations. I’ll be back with the team already again in the week and back in training, just staying on it, head down.”
“I don’t have too much emotion, except for [feeling] driven right now. But it’s incredible to be able to close back so many points in these last two races – it’s been necessary.”
“They’re [Red Bull] obviously still very fast, as you could see with their fastest lap and both their cars getting past pretty much everyone quite easily. So we’ve still got our work cut out.”
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Lewis Hamilton loving the fight
The reigning world champion is absolutely loving the pressure he is facing from Max Verstappen this year. It is probably for the first time in the turbo-hybrid era where Hamilton has been challenged so intensively by a non-Mercedes driver.
“I’m loving it. I love the close battle and the pressure and the demands it puts on you and the whole team. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. But these next two races are needing a better performance, so we’ll be bringing our triple A-game for those ones.”
Hamilton’s new engine has been a topic of concern for Red Bull ahead of the remaining races. But at the same time, they expect the pace of that engine to dwindle.