HAMILTON’S FORCED TO FIGHT ODDS

F1: AZERBAIJAN GRAND PRIX, TOMORROW IT IS 188 days since Lewis Hamilton last tasted the champagne of a Grand Prix winner.

It is almost three decades since Frenchman Alain Prost failed to win any of the first four races before beating Ayrton Senna to the 1989 championship. Prost was the last driver to achieve such a feat.

So the numbers are adding up against the chances of the world champion beating Sebastian Vettel to this year’s title.

Hamilton (above) was only fifth in practice yesterday ahead of tomorrow’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, but insists he can finish ahead of the rest of the field for the first time since the US Grand Prix in October.

He said: “I don’t think about statistics and I am always one for wanting to defy the odds.

“Do I feel the need for the win? I am enjoying the battle and the whole experience, and that is what motorsport is all about.

“Finishing first is obviously a great feeling, but it always feels better when you have come from further back.

“When it feels like you have had a harder slog to get that victory, the win always feels better so when it does arrive, it is going to be great.”

Hamilton was behind his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas, who has out-qualified him at the last two rounds, again yesterday.

The 33-year-old British driver is winless from the opening three rounds, and without a victory in his last six appearances and nine points adrift of championship leader Vettel, who was only 11th after he failed to get a decent lap together yesterday.

The Baku Street Circuit has not been kind to Hamilton since its debut on the calendar in 2016 either.

He finished only fifth in that first race before a loose headrest cost him victory a year ago, a race memorable for Hamilton’s collision with Vettel in which the Ferrari driver deliberately rammed into his Mercedes rival.