Lewis Hamilton will try to lay down a marker in this week\u2019s season-opening Australian Grand Prix as he sets his sights on beating fierce rival Sebastian Vettel to<\/p>\n
a fifth F1 world title.<\/p>\n
Mercedes\u2019s reigning world champion and Ferrari\u2019s Vettel can both join the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio as five-time world title-holders this year, second only<\/p>\n
to Michael Schumacher\u2019s eight.<\/p>\n
Vettel swept home in last year\u2019s opening race against Hamilton in Melbourne before the British ace went on to land the championship with two races to spare<\/p>\n
from the German.<\/p>\n
Ferrari once again have sizzled in pre-season testing along with Red Bull, pointing to a potential three-team assault on this season\u2019s constructors\u2019 title.<\/p>\n
But Hamilton, who is reportedly about to sign a new contract with Mercedes which could earn him up to \u00a340 million (US$55 million) per year, says at 33 he\u2019s<\/p>\n
motivated to blaze on.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like the start of the final chapter, and I don\u2019t feel as though I am about to embark on my last contract,\u201d Hamilton told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to arrive in Melbourne fit. I want to hit my target weight. I want to kill it through practice, get pole position and I want to win the race convincingly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how long this feeling is going to last when I go into a new season, but as long as I am still feeling like this I will keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamilton has won twice in Melbourne, in 2008 and 2015. But Vettel, also chasing his third Australian victory, is in a similarly feisty mood ahead of the new<\/p>\n
season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know what we need to do,\u201d Vettel said. \u201cThere are lessons that were obvious, some were a bit more hidden, but I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll dig deep enough and try to<\/p>\n
find all of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are completely fired up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s going to be close\u2019<\/p>\n
Hamilton also expects the Red Bulls of Australia\u2019s Daniel Ricciardo and Dutchman Max Verstappen to close the gap during the 21-stop season, based on winter<\/p>\n
testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Red Bull are the fastest at the moment, potentially,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super-confident in my team and the work they\u2019ve done, I just think it\u2019s going to be close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starting the new campaign in a home GP places Ricciardo under extra pressure as he bids to become the race\u2019s first Australian winner since Alan Jones in<\/p>\n
1980.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting the F1 season in Australia means there is so much hype and so much build-up, with me being the only Australian on the grid there is extra attention,<\/p>\n
extra questioning and expectation,\u201d Ricciardo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMelbourne in 2017 was a combination of my errors and some misfortune, I crashed in qualifying and then we had a technical issue for the race. So 2018 is<\/p>\n
definitely time to get what we deserve in Melbourne.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new season also marks the introduction of governing body FIA\u2019s new mandatory safety halo head protection device, which has drawn ire from some teams.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m not impressed with the whole thing and if you give me a chainsaw I would take it off,\u201d bristled Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we need to look after the driver\u2019s safety, but what we have implemented is aesthetically not appealing and we need to come up with a solution that simply<\/p>\n
looks better.\u201d<\/p>\n
FIA chief Jean Todt hit back, saying the measure had been introduced to save lives and at the request of drivers\u2019 body the GPDA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am amazed to hear some people say: \u2018OK, motor racing is dangerous, if it happens, it happens,\u2019\u201c Todt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you imagine how we would all feel if something happened and if we would have had the halo it would not have happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
Although a majority of drivers are in favour of the device, some have said they are opposed to it. Others have raised objections about the difficulty of getting in<\/p>\n
and out of the car and identifying drivers on the track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lewis Hamilton will try to lay down a marker in this week\u2019s season-opening Australian Grand Prix as he sets his sights on beating fierce rival Sebastian Vettel to a fifth F1 world title. Mercedes\u2019s reigning world champion and Ferrari\u2019s Vettel can both join the legendary Juan Manuel Fangio as five-time world title-holders this year, second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25406,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25404\/revisions\/25406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}