Jun.27 (GMM) Lewis Hamilton featured prominently in both the specialist motor racing and the mainstream media headlines on a busy Thursday in the UK.
In the morning, he arrived at Silverstone, where an impressive tally of 10,000 spectators would ultimately gather to watch him top the times on the final day of pre-British grand prix testing.After two consecutive failures to score points, the McLaren driver was bullish about his chances on his home circuit."I haven't back-to-backed the new parts so I don't have a benchmark, but the car feels strong around here," he said.Key championship rival Kimi Raikkonen was more than a second off the pace, but on Tuesday, the same Ferrari driven by Felipe Massa was fastest of the ten teams and cars in action."It is hard to say from the testing what fuel loads everybody else was running and where we are exactly, but the feeling is good," Raikkonen said on day three.Hamilton, 23, then hopped from the Northamptonshire venue to London's Hyde Park, where the world's so-called 'A-list' celebrities gathered for a dinner to mark Nelson Mandela's upcoming 90th birthday.Despite Hamilton's gripes at Magny-Cours a week ago about his recent press coverage, he was photographed at the affair at the same table as Oprah Winfrey and Elton John, and with his date, a member of the girl pop group Pussycat Dolls.
