MARINA BAY, Singapore -- Despite spending the past week promoting his new Tommy Hilfiger fashion range, Lewis Hamilton insists his title battle with Sebastian Vettel has always been at the front of his mind.
The Mercedes driver has a deal with the American fashion brand and over the past two weeks has been promoting his new range of clothing, TommyXLewis. Hamilton launched the collection in Shanghai last week before travelling to New York this week for a launch party.
Hamilton is no stranger to travelling long distances between races, but insists F1 is always his priority.
"Trying to fit in the training obviously for the last week has not been easy, but that is not how every single week goes for me," he said. "It was just a hectic time for me with a lot going on in the outside world. I travelled a lot more this week than I have all year long -- in just these two weeks -- but from experience I have been able to move around even more than I have these past two weeks and still arrive and switch into race mode.
"There is not a single moment on these past two weeks when I have had those other things going on where I was not thinking about racing. Not thinking about the championship, how I want to arrive, knowing that we are coming to a difficult race which we need to bring more to. There is not a moment that I don't think about it."
Hamilton leads Vettel by 30 points in the championship, but the evidence of the past few races suggests Ferrari has the faster car. When he was asked if it was a gamble to dedicate so much time to interests outside F1 at such a crucial point in the season, he maintained that it had a positive impact.
"Not at all. Referring to the question before, I get a lot of energy from these sorts of things. I find it stimulating and I think you see it in my results which have shown that for the past few years. I have travelled a lot more than I have this year, this is actually the year I have travelled the least probably in the last five years."