Hamilton not bothered about credit for forcing Vettel error

Lewis Hamilton is not bothered by receiving credit for forcing Sebastian Vettel into the error that cost the Ferrari driver victory in Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix, instead taking pride in the fact he was able to "extract a bit more" out of Mercedes' car over the race weekend.

Hamilton took his fifth win of the season on Sunday after Vettel - the winner on-track - was hit with a five-second time penalty for unsafely rejoining the circuit, having gone off when trying to defend the lead from Hamilton.

It was the second time this season Vettel had made a mistake while in a wheel-to-wheel fight with long-standing rival Hamilton, the first coming in Bahrain earlier this year.

Asked if he felt he deserved more credit for forcing Vettel into the error, Hamilton said: "I don’t really care for that to be honest. I don’t feel in life I need credit to be happy.

"I feel I did a great job this weekend, I didn’t leave anything on the table - apart from FP2 that was not very good, but I’m not perfect. I haven’t crashed for a long time.

"But what I can say is the races have been really strong, really consistent, and even on weekends where we’ve not had the car to really win I’ve been able to put it right there with the front-runners. My goal on the race weekend is to do the best job I can for the team, but to extract above and beyond.

"It’s cool on a weekend like this where I feel like I was able to extract a bit more, and when I leave here I don’t feel like I left anything on the table today. I like to feel I conducted myself in the right manner, the guys worked so hard collectively, and we came up with the result."

While Hamilton was buoyed by Mercedes' performance in Montreal, he warned that Ferrari's impressive pace proved the team cannot let up at the front of the pack.

"We’ve got work to do. We’ve seen how quick Ferrari were this weekend, they were kind of right there at the last race as well," Hamilton said.

"It will be interesting to see how it plays out. They’re quicker than us on the straights. They have another level of engine mode they can go to, particularly in qualifying but also the race, so we’ve got work to do.

"But at least we’ve got a good fight."