Hamilton Sees No Short Cut to Title

Lewis Hamilton has predicted that the world championship contest will go to the wire and not be resolved until the Brazilian grand prix at Interlagos on November 2.

The McLaren driver was talking at Hockenheim where he had been continuing his Silverstone-winning form by setting the pace during testing in preparation for the German grand prix on Sunday week. "The last race. I can only guess but I am sure it will be a lot like last year," he said. "Last year it was just as close between the top three drivers and there was one point separating us at the end. So I can only assume it will be at the last race again.

"I think we have been very consistent all year. I don't have a reason for why it has been up and down. But this is racing, you can't just have a perfect year, you don't have perfect years. There are lots of different things that crop up and Ferrari had their problems at the last race. But then we have had our fair share, that's racing."

Hamilton is also looking to his own team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen, to help him fight the Ferraris. "I think it's an advantage having two drivers [from the same team] fighting for the world championship," he said. "I'm hoping Heikki takes more points off them than anything else."

Meanwhile Kimi Raikkonen, who made the wrong tyre choice and wound up being lapped in the British grand prix, predicted that there was still plenty of time for Ferrari to counter-attack and see off

the McLarens across the season's remaining nine races. Last year the Finn was 17 points behind Hamilton with two races to go but then won the Chinese race after the British driver spun off coming into the pit lane to change badly worn tyres and was presented with another win in Brazil by his team-mate, Felipe Massa, to take the title by a point.

"We have a good package and we haven't lost any speed, we just need to have a good weekend," said the world champion. Probably we should have got more points but we made a mistake and it happens in racing."