Whitmarsh: Lewis will bounce back

Martin Whitmarsh has tipped Lewis Hamilton to come back "super strong" at Monza after the Briton endured a weekend to forget in Belgium.

Having gone into the summer break on the back of a morale-boosting victory in Hungary, Hamilton arrived at Spa looking to continue his championship fightback but ultimately came away with no points to show for the weekend following a string of incidents both on and off the track.

On Saturday, the 27-year-old qualified seven places behind pole-sitting team-mate Jenson Button after wrongly opting to discard the new lower-downforce rear wing the team had bought to the weekend following difficulties in final practice and then, at the start of Sunday's race, he was crashed into on the run to La Source by Lotus's Romain Grosjean and propelled into the resulting first-corner carnage.

Hamilton also found himself at the centre of a storm surrounding his Twitter posts. Having already having chosen himself to delete some messages he had initially published after qualifying, on Sunday morning he was ordered by McLaren to remove a picture of a telemetry overlay comparing his and Button's Q3 laps.

But despite the disappointing weekend, his team boss is expecting the Briton to bounce back in formidable fashion when the sport reconvenes in Italy at the end of this week.

"It has been a difficult week for him, but he is very tough and he is starting to be a seasoned campaigner," said Whitmarsh.

"I would be surprised if he didn't come back super strong and win in Monza."

Hamilton, whose summer break was overshadowed by the death of a close aunt, remains 47 points adrift of Fernando Alonso in the Drivers' Championship after the Spaniard was also taken out in Sunday's first-corner melee, but now only 16 points clear of resurgent team-mate Button.