Hamilton reluctantly accepts penalty

The Briton, already serving a penalty for hitting Kimi Raikkonen at the Canadian Grand Prix, was given the drive-through for overtaking Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel by cutting across a chicane.

The penalty ruined all his chances of scoring points in France, and the McLaren driver had to settle for 10th position.

Hamilton said he had no choice but to accept the penalty, although he felt he had not done anything wrong.

"I feel cool. It's all good. Racing is racing. I'm still here, there's nothing you can do to get me out of it," Hamilton told reporters after the race.

"I don't particularly feel I did anything. I went into the corner. I believe I was ahead on the outside and I couldn't turn in on the guy, otherwise we would have crashed so I took the outside line, lost the back on the marbles and went over the kerb.

"I continued because I don't believe I overtook him by going over the kerb, I actually took him before that."

He added: "I kept pushing. There's nothing you can do that can distract me. You can keep on giving me penalties and whatever you want to do and I'll keep battling and try and come back with a result."

Hamilton, who made contact with teammate Heikki Kovalainen while trying to recover ground on the first lap, has not scored any points in the last two races.

"I did everything I needed to do, I stayed out of trouble and drove what I thought was a fair race," added Hamilton. "We just missed the points, so that's three races now without scoring points but there's still 10 races to go."

He added: "I had quite a good start, but there were about four people abreast in front of me so I took it easy. I was able to overtake a few people in turn five and I thought I overtook reasonably fairly into turn seven.

"Going in I was ahead but I lost the back end and to correct it I corrected it and I went over the kerb which I don't particularly see as cheating, but rules are rules."

Hamilton is now ten points behind championship leader Felipe Massa.