Lewis Hamilton says pressure is still on despite Canadian Grand Prix victory

With the championship battle starting to boil down to a straight fight between the leading teams, Hamilton says the fight is wide open - and no one can afford to relax yet.

"While it's always pleasing to be leading the championship, I'm only two points ahead of Fernando [Alonso] - which is nothing, particularly when there are a handful of really strong drivers all separated by a couple of points, so there's still everything to play for," he explained.

"Secondly, the intensity of this year's championship means there's so little breathing space - we may have won in Canada, but there's an enormous amount of pressure to keep racking up good results at every grand prix.

"I think that consistency, rather than individual strong results, will be the key to winning this world championship, so we need to back it up in Valencia with another strong result."

He added: "People are always asking me to predict what will happen at the next race and I always tell them it's really difficult to make an accurate prediction - but I'll be heading to Valencia feeling super-motivated to get another strong result and maintain my momentum before we head into Silverstone and the Santander British Grand Prix."

While Hamilton's focus is firmly on victory, team-mate Jenson Button just wants to get himself back in the title fight after recent troubles.

"Canada was just one of those weekends where things didn't come together - after some difficult races, I really needed the track time on Friday to find a clearer direction with the set-up, and, unfortunately, that didn't happen due to a number of technical issues," he said.

"And I think that set the tone for the rest of the weekend: we lacked the data we needed to tackle the race and we struggled. Still, there were important lessons to be learned from those issues, and we addressed everything back at MTC once we'd returned from Canada in a bid to get a clearer direction for Valencia next weekend. A day like that is enormously productive and I think we covered a lot of ground.

"The last few races haven't delivered the results I'd like, but there are still 13 races to go. We've had seven different winners and no clear championship leader has emerged, so I'll be looking to get a decent result under my belt next weekend in order to get my title bid back on track."