Hamilton seeks flying start in Australia

Lewis Hamilton is aiming to begin his world championship assault in style when the new Formula One season gets under way in Melbourne this weekend.

Hamilton finished an impressive third in his first Grand Prix at Albert Park 12 months ago but it was a thrilling overtaking move around the outside of then defending champion and McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso in the first corner that really caught the eye.

The 23-year-old went on to enjoy the most successful season by a rookie in the history of the sport, claiming four wins and eventually missing out on the driver’s title to Kimi Raikkonen by just two points.

And Hamilton fully believes he can improve on last year’s result after 58 laps of racing on Sunday despite it being only his second visit to the circuit.

“I feel we have a better opportunity this weekend than we did last year at this time,” he said.

“Going into this weekend I feel even more positive.”

The departure of Alonso to Renault has seen Hamilton take more of a leading role on the development of the 2008 McLaren, and he has relished the extra responsibility.

“We’ve been working very, very hard through winter making sure the training’s even better but also preparing the car,” he added.

“Seeing a new car evolve, seeing the evolution of last year’s car, and seeing the input by me and Heikki (Kovalainen) and Pedro (de la Rosa) and Gary (Paffett), and seeing how we can help push the team forward I think is really special, it’s a great experience.”

Hamilton also underlined his single-minded approach after revealing he made the decision to focus on Formula One from a very early age despite the obvious risks he would never realise his ambition.

“My dad said to me ’you have to study hard and I’ll keep you racing and you have to make lots of sacrifices to be able to be successful’,” he said.

“At a very early stage I made that decision that I wanted to be a Formula One driver so I dedicated my life to it and so did my family.

“Along the way there was lots of different turning points and there’s two different roads you can take.

“It really was about taking that split decision right there and then you don’t have too much time to make the decision, get on with it and I was very, very fortunate that I went down the right route.”

Hamilton announced himself on the Formula One scene by overshadowing the more illustrious Alonso in Melbourne and the man from Stevenage believes overtaking the Spaniard convinced him he had the ability to compete in motorsport’s top tier.

“If you look at last year’s race, the first race, I wasn’t really nervous but everyone sort of expected me to fail. I started fourth and was going to come out of turn one in about eighth place if I didn’t do something about it,” he said.

“I made a real split decision, it was right there and then I had to make the quickest decision ever.

“I went down the outside and I managed to come out in third place.”