Hamilton confident in spite of a five-place grid penalty

Lewis Hamilton is hoping his McLaren will be quick enough for him to compete for victory at the Chinese Grand Prix this weekend, despite a five-place grid penalty for needing to change the car’s gearbox.

Hamilton showed that his car has plenty of pace by winning back-to-back poles at the Australian and Malaysian GPs to start the Formula 1 season. However, the highest he can now start in Sunday’s Chinese GP is sixth.

“Of course, it’s not the nicest thing to hear that we’ve got a problem but what you do? You just take it on the chin,” said Hamilton. “We’re still here, we’ve still got a great chance to win.”

The English driver, who said his team discovered the gearbox problem in the last couple of days, added: “When I was a kid, I always used to like coming from the back of the grid.

“I’ll be five places back from wherever I qualify. That means I’m going to have to have a good race with a few people to fight for position.”

McLaren’s confidence is still high after securing three podium finishes in the first two races of the season, with Jenson Button capturing the Australian GP and Hamilton twice finishing in third.

McLaren’s strong start suggests it has closed the gap with Red Bull, the dominant team last year, and that 2012 could be a more competitive season.

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, the defending champion, acknowledged as much. “If you look so far, I think McLaren is the strongest car. In Australia, they were pretty dominant,” he said.

“It has only been two races, so I think we need a little bit more to judge the season, but it looks to be quite tight with many good cars, many drivers close to each other.”

Vettel finished second in Melbourne and was out of the points at Sepang after colliding with Narain Karthikeyan with nine laps to go.

He said his team will have to work out some issues with its car if he’s going to return to his form of last year. “I think generally there’s not a fundamental problem with the car,” he said. “The problem that we have at this stage, I think, is that the balance of the car doesn’t seem to be as good as it was last year. It has nothing to do with grip, grip level or downforce level. It’s more getting the entire car to work as a whole. I think that’s where we’re trying to understand and improve.”