Lewis Hamilton: 'Max Verstappen as aggressive towards Lando Norris as he was in 2021'

Lewis Hamilton says has not changed from their furious fight for the 2021 title.

The racer is currently defending his crown from but has been accused of overly-aggressive defending against his title rival in recent weeks. Last Sunday in Mexico, he picked up 20 seconds' worth of penalties for running the man off the road.

For , it sparked memories of his infamous 2021 duel with Verstappen which turned sour, particularly towards the end of the season. The seven-time F1 champion said: "All you have to do is go back and listen to some of my radio comments back in the day. It is not something I really want to tap into. It has nothing to do with me at the moment.

"Obviously, if I was in the battle I could lean more into it. These are things you have to ask those two because those are the ones that it is affecting. But I do not think you are seeing much difference across the years, from 2021 until now, it is pretty much the same."

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Verstappen started the current campaign in familiar fashion after two seasons of Red Bull dominance. But he has not won a Grand Prix since June with McLaren and overtaking Red Bull in terms of competitiveness, while have also had some strong weekends.

Hamilton has tasted victory twice this year, at Silverstone and in Belgium before the summer break, ending a drought which stretched back to the penultimate race of that 2021 season. And he is full of praise for fellow Brit Norris, currently 47 points behind Verstappen, who has been the one to sustain a title challenge against the Dutchman.

He said: "It is really exciting for the sport. The last couple of years, not necessarily so exciting, obviously, with Max just leading the way and that sometimes happens. But I think it has been really exciting for the fans to see that it can go right down to the wire at the end of the year.

"There is still a possibility of Lando catching up. I think he has got to get 11 points more or something in each race or something over these next races, which is definitely possible with the performance they have. We all know Max and his strengths and cannot really say too many weaknesses, if any. And you have got Lando, who has really risen to the occasion and has been really leading the team.

"I have not really spent too much time looking at how they are racing and how they are positioning the cars. Obviously, everyone knows what happened in the last race or the last two races, but everyone will have an opinion on it.

But at the end of the day, those two drivers know what they are doing. I am really excited to see what happens over these next races. I am hoping that I can at least have a good seat view to watch it all as they will be ahead."