Lewis Hamilton has admitted he is eager to the possibility of fighting Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel throughout 2017, hoping for more races like the 2014 Bahrain Grand Prix where he enjoyed a titanic battle with team-mate Nico Rosberg.
After losing out to Vettel in the season opener in Australia, Hamilton wants to come back fighting against the German in a season-long title duel on the race track and not via strategic battles in the pitlane.
When asked by ESPN if Australia made him ‘eager’ for the fight, he said: “Yeah, my favourite form of racing is go-karting, it’s still hands-down the best form of racing because it’s wheel-to-wheel all the way from start to finish.
“That’s what I grew up living for and I lived every day in Formula 1 in my life, waiting for the day for those kind of battles. We had an amazing battle in 2014 with Nico Rosberg in Bahrain, I’m dying for that day to come again.
“I hope that this happens with me and Sebastian because he’s a four-time world champion, one of the best of our generation, so I think the fans are sitting on the edge of their seats for that.
“I just hope it’s not a season of strategy. I want to do some track stuff, that’s what I live for, that’s what drives me.”
After pre-season testing, Hamilton tipped Ferrari to be the favourites for the race and it ultimately proved to be true, but despite admitting to losing sleep over the loss of the race, he isn’t downbeat and is keen to come back stronger.
Hamilton added: “I felt pretty good after the race, and I was then afterwards thinking that you lost the race and it feels more painful but you just turn that into… you use that as positive energy, so you’re training, focused on the next race, all I could think of.
“I couldn’t sleep one night and all I could think of is to win the next race. So whilst some of it is negative, we turn it into positives and we move forward.
“Ferrari won it. They did the better job. It wasn’t ours to lose, it was both of us to win and they did the job at the end of the day.
“They’ve won it fair and square and perhaps the thing that makes it exciting is that their car is strong in certain areas and our car is stronger in certain areas. And I think that’s going to make the season exciting hopefully.”
