{"id":19306,"date":"2013-09-18T07:06:57","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T11:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=19306"},"modified":"2013-09-18T07:06:57","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T11:06:57","slug":"hamilton-happy-to-sit-out-f1-silly-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/hamilton-happy-to-sit-out-f1-silly-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton happy to sit out F1 &#8216;silly season&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lewis Hamilton has admitted not featuring in this year&#8217;s driver &#8216;silly season&#8217; has been a weight off his shoulders.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-left alignleft\" style=\"margin: 5px 10px;\" alt=\"Lewis-Hamilton-car-1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/gallery\/f1-2013-rif-images\/f1-2013-drivers\/Lewis-Hamilton-car-1.jpg\" width=\"384\" height=\"256\" \/>A year ago, the 2008 world champion was a leading player in F1&#8217;s high-stakes game of annual musical chairs, as he weighed up between staying at McLaren or moving to another team.<\/p>\n<p>Now happily at Mercedes and on a three-year contract, the Briton said he has every intention of staying with the German team for that entire period and &#8220;hopefully even longer&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton also admitted he has enjoyed being a mere spectator, as the &#8216;silly season&#8217; played out instead with Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and others in the main roles.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Last year, I tried my best to avoid it, but of course it was hard to deal with all the questions and the fact that I didn&#8217;t know what I was going to do,&#8221; he is quoted by Brazil&#8217;s Totalrace.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was taking my energy away from me, but it&#8217;s not like that anymore.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a great feeling to be in this position,&#8221; said Hamilton.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The difference is like night and day.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lewis Hamilton has admitted not featuring in this year&#8217;s driver &#8216;silly season&#8217; has been a weight off his shoulders. A year ago, the 2008 world champion was a leading player in F1&#8217;s high-stakes game of annual musical chairs, as he weighed up between staying at McLaren or moving to another team. Now happily at Mercedes &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,154,5284,34],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19307,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19306\/revisions\/19307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}