McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton believes his disappointing fifth place finish in last season’s Formula One drivers championship was in part due to over-indulgence off the track.
The 2008 world champion, in interviews in the British press on Sunday, said: “Last year quite a lot of times I went out and enjoyed myself thinking that these things don’t affect you but in actual fact they do, they have a knock-on effect. “It takes you two days to recover, you miss two days of training and your mind is somewhere else when you get to the race.
“It’s the amount of travel you do, choosing the right time to travel, the right place at the right time, ahead of time. Going out to Australia and China early, to make sure I get there in plenty of time. Those kind of things.
“They are all sorts of things you can improve.” The 2012 F1 season gets underway in Melbourne next Sunday.
