AUGUST 27, 2006

Hamilton demands the attention of F1 teams

Lewis Hamilton drove a blinding race on Sunday in Istanbul to take command of the GP2 Championship, stopping a recent run of success by Nelson Piquet Jr. Piquet won the race on Saturday while Hamilton drove a strong race to finish second. This put the pair seventh and eighth on the grid on Sunday. On the second lap Hamilton spun and dropped back to 16th. He then drove an astonishing race to overtake everyone ahead of him with the exception of Andreas Zuber, the Dubai-based Austrian, who managed to get to the finish line ahead of him. One more lap and Zuber would have fallen victim of Hamilton as well. The race was bad news for Piquet who ended up fifth and thus dropped to 10 points behind Hamilton in the championship with just two races remaining. The maximum point score is 13 and so Piquet is going to have to rely on Hamilton hitting trouble if he is to have any chance of winning the title.

Hamilton's drive was such that if McLaren does not sign up the youngster for next season, there will be a team which will move to grab him away.

McLaren continues to downplay the possibilities but we expect things to move quickly once Hamilton has wrapped up the title.