Hamilton shrugs off Alonso's comments

The 23-year-old Briton, who leads the championship by five points from Massa, endured a bitter rivalry with Alonso when the pair raced at McLaren together in 2007 and the Spaniard acrimoniously split with the team at the end of the year.

"I don't particularly have an opinion on it," Hamilton replied when asked about the comments.

"I focus on my job, if we can be competitive this weekend we will try and get points and be up front great, what the others do is up to them," he said.

Refusing to be drawn any further on Alonso's comments, Hamilton instead praised Renault's up-turn in form, which has resulted in the team winning the last two races.

"They have done a fantastic job and great to see them do so well, and see how hard they have worked over the last two years," he said. "Not a surprise to see them do so well, sure they will be pushing us hard through the weekend."

Hamilton and McLaren return to the scene of his infamous pit-entry error, where he slid into a gravel trap on badly worn tyres, gifting his title rivals valuable points.

When asked what lessons he had learned from the experience, Lewis said: "From last year I think just keep your head up when things happen and to avoid the gravel trap here!

"From last weekend," he added, "there were quite a lot of positives I took, I move forward, the team are positive, we make mistakes together as a team and we move on together."

Hamilton added, that despite the frustrations of Fuji, he had no intention of changing his racing approach.

"Same as always," he said. "You come here and try to do the best job we can.

"The car is very competitive, we were very quick here last year and should perhaps be more competitive this year with the car we have had, but it will be a very tough weekend, we have to keep pushing away and do the best job we can."