McLaren team leader Lewis Hamilton has accepted that a decent haul of points may be the best he can achieve at Magny-COurs, but insists that he will approach the French Grand Prix looking to win.

Lewis Hamilton has insisted that he will not be approaching this weekend's French Grand Prix differently to any other race, despite having been slapped with a ten-place grid penalty for taking Kimi Raikkonen out of the Canadian round two weeks ago.

The best that the Briton - who led the championship standings heading to Montreal - can hope for is to start on the inside of the sixth row, but he and the McLaren team may opt to tackle qualifying differently if it provides scope for tactical racing, such as running longer on his first stint to try and gain track position during the pit-stops at Magny-Cours.

Hamilton, who says that he is less perturbed by the way he retired in Canadian than he would have been had he been leading on track by ten seconds, maintains that he will be aiming to take his third win of the year, but accepts that he will probably have to settle for fewer points.

"It's a race, I'm here to win and so I'll approach it the same," the Briton claimed, "Obviously, we want to finish, we want to get as many points as possible. It just makes that harder. It's quite funny, that's the way it goes. I don't particularly think [that it changes the strategy]. Obviously, it would be nice to qualify on the front row, which would put us just outside the top ten, but I don't know. I will have to wait and speak to my engineers.

"I'm always aiming to win but, realistically, I think we just have to try and aim for a podium finish if possible - but I think it's going to be very, very tough. As you can see, [McLaren, Ferrari and BMW Sauber are] all very close and there's now quite a few teams that are very competitive. This is not the easy track to overtake [at] as well, so I will keep my fingers crossed and do the best job I can. I hope we can push and finish in the top five."

Having confessed, earlier in the week, to be feeling the pressure of being a grand prix driver, Hamilton was asked whether having to overcome the punishment added to that feeling.

"For me, I don't think I have less pressure," he said, noting that his initial quotes referred to the calls on his time away from the race track, "At the back, I think there's more work for me to do. Considering we're all so close in the championship, I guess it spices it up a bit - if that's what they want.

"It's going to be harder, coming from the back, but I don't have any doubts or any worries, I think we're going to have a very strong package this weekend, and I think the car will be as good, if not better, than it was in the last race. With that pace, as long as we stay out of trouble we should be able to score some good points."

Hamilton's chances of winning the race will not be helped by the emergence of Robert Kubica as a genuine threat for top spot after Canada, but also by McLaren's lack of recent success at Magny Cours, where the team hasn't won since the turn of the century.

"I think, this year, we have a better chance in terms of the package we have," he claimed, "It is a better package than we had last year, so therefore we should be quicker. I have only been here once [in F1, but], last year, I qualified on the front row and finished third, so I was quite happy with it. It is going to be a challenge this weekend, but that's the way it goes."