Lewis Hamilton is setting his sights on a top ten finish at the Belgian Grand Prix in the belief that the podium will be out of reach in a normal race without any safety cars or stoppages.
Hamilton is due to start from the back row of the grid at the Belgian Grand Prix after incurring a 55-place grid penalty over the course of the weekend for multiple engine changes. With title rival Nico Rosberg starting from pole position, Hamilton faces a battle through the field to try to minimise the damage to his 19-point championship lead on Sunday.
"It's going to be a very, very hard race and if I had a choice of tracks where you had to start dead last and overtake, this is definitely not in the top three for me as an overtaking circuit," he said. "While you can have a good tow up Eau Rouge, with it being this hot it's going to be hard to follow and being in the traffic it's going to be very unlikely that I get to my [pit] stop target or go longer than the guys that are in front of me.
"So I envisage tomorrow is going to be hard to get into the top ten with the tyres the way they are, but I hope that I prove myself wrong and I am pleasantly surprised! I hope to be able to take the experiences that we have had over the years, and me as a racing driver, take those things into consideration and apply myself tomorrow and be better and stronger. I can't predict what is going to happen tomorrow, but I hope it's going to be a clean race. Time will tell."
Hamilton's concerns about tyre life are based on the levels of performance degradation all drivers have been experiencing in the hot conditions at Spa-Francorchamps this weekend. The unusually high temperatures combined with Pirelli's high tyre pressure prescriptions -- a precautionary measure following two blowouts at Spa last year -- have resulted in the tyres overheating and blistering, which in turn reduces their performance life considerably.
The last time Hamilton started at the back of the grid -- in China -- he fought back to seventh place, but he suspects Spa will present an even tougher challenge, especially with the added difficulty of managing tyre temperatures and pressures while racing in traffic.
"It's completely different to China. In China we didn't have failures the previous year and they [Pirelli] didn't put the pressures up to a ridiculous number. That is the case here, they had the failures last year and then there was the failures this year, so they put the pressures up to 23 or 24 PSI or whatever it is, which is so high.
"I've never seen pressures like that in my whole racing career, so that doesn't help. Plus, it's so hot that with those pressures we will get blisters and in China the tyres went a lot longer and it was cooler, so the tyres behaved more like normal tyres. But here there was not really much you could do to stop the tyres from blistering and overheating, so it's definitely a much harder race than China ever was."
Although Hamilton's strategy options are likely to depend on how well he is able to manage the tyres, he has the clear cut option of starting the race from the pit lane or the back row of the grid. Mercedes is set to analyse that decision ahead of Sunday's race, but Hamilton is already firmly against the idea of not starting on the grid.
"I never like to start from the pit lane. It means you have to wait for them to come past the pit lane exit, and by the time I get round the corner they will be halfway down the hill and the last car will almost be going into Eau Rouge, and it means I then have to catch up.
"There is the possibility of me crashing in Turn 1 and you avoid that [with a pit lane start], but there is also the possibility that there's not and then I just give up eight or seven seconds or whatever it is. I can't afford to lose any time, so my plan is to start on the grid."