Hamilton says Webber the main priority

The McLaren driver, leading the championship from the Australian by three points, will start from fifth place, one position behind Webber.

Hamilton said he is still hoping to beat all his rivals, but conceded passing Webber early on will be his main goal.

"I guess it would be good for us to finish ahead of him," the Briton said. "We are only three points ahead of him. Clearly we want to finish ahead of everyone up front but he is the closest rival to me at the moment so he has to be the priority at the beginning of the race.

"But of course we want to finish 1-2 tomorrow, so I will do everything I can - I might take some tips off Jenson. He is pretty good at coming from where I am, and getting up there."

The Briton said he did not feel having opted to go into qualifying without the F-duct was necessarily an error, but he said he had not managed to extract the best from the package.

"I don't think it is necessarily a mistake," said Hamilton. "While I was out there, I am on the lightest downforce level. For me I tried both downforce levels and both were as fast as each other but my own allowed me to be a little quicker on the straights.

"I felt it was the direction I wanted to go in, and maybe in qualifying I was just was not in enough free space to have the optimum balance and get the most out of it, so that is probably my fault."