Hamilton hails 'best race' to date

"I probably drove the best race I've ever done," the 23-year-old Briton, winner of five of the 22 grands prix that he has started, told a news conference.

Hamilton, who suffered a costly blowout in last year's Turkish race, was forced to make an extra third pitstop as a precaution after Bridgestone expressed concern about his front right tyre.

However, last year's championship runner-up, in a sensational rookie season, said second place was more than he had hoped for at the start.

"It doesn't particularly matter whether you win or not. It's whether you drive 100 percent, it's whether you extract the most out of the car," he said when asked why he considered it his best performance.

"It's one of those where you end the race and you ask yourself and the team: 'Could we have done a better job?' And I strongly feel we couldn't.

"The pitstops were almost perfect ... I just feel my race pace is getting stronger and stronger over the year," continued Hamilton, who overtook Ferrari's race winner Felipe Massa after his first stop.

"My predicted race finish was fifth and it could have been a lot worse. If I didn't get away second, I'd have probably finished sixth or even worse.

"I just feel that we did a fantastic job to bring it back home."

Team boss Ron Dennis said Hamilton had been forced to do three stops as a safety precaution, with Bridgestone saying that the Briton's driving style put particular pressure on the tyre in turn eight.

Hamilton had a tyre blowout exiting the same corner last year, a failure that cost him at least third place.

With his Finnish teammate Heikki Kovalainen piling into the tyre wall at the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago, fortunately without injury, nobody wanted to see another high-speed failure.

"It (last year's blowout) was on my mind at some stages," Hamilton said of his race. "I was having some vibrations and wasn't sure if that was the tyre or a flat spot that I'd possibly picked up earlier on.

"I was checking the tyre on nearly every lap on the exit from turn eight.

"Fortunately the tyres were fine," he added. "It was all down to safety really, that's why we were forced into that because they didn't want to have another incident a bit like the last race or like last year.

"There's nothing worse than having a tyre blow out at 200 miles an hour. Unfortunately it put us on the back foot. Perhaps without the three stop we would have had a better chance of winning the race but I'm very happy with second."

The Briton said the problem would not happen anywhere else and was confident for the next race in Monaco.

Hamilton is third in the championship after five races, level with Massa on 28 points, with Ferrari's world champion Kimi Raikkonen seven ahead of them.