LEWIS HAMILTON still sees himself as the hunter rather than the hunted - despite taking a three-point lead in the drivers' championship.

The British driver is chasing a hat-trick of victories in Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix after overtaking Nico Rosberg in the title race.

He took over at the top of the F1 standings by winning in Singapore a fortnight ago while his Merecedes team-mate had to retire due to steering-wheel problems.

With five races to go - and double points on offer in the finale in Abu Dhabi - Hamilton now has the momentum.

But he admitted: "In my head I don't think that I am leading the championship. I still feel that I'm 20 points behind or whatever.

"I still feel like I'm chasing. I still feel like I'm hunting, so that's a good feeling."

Hamilton has won the last two races from pole and also set the fastest lap. But the 2008 world champion - who last led the table in May - knows just how quickly things can change.

Reliability is the key now, with any retirement potentially a title-wrecker, but Hamilton is not planning on doing anything differently.

When asked whether he might drive more defensively, he replied: "No, this is game time.

"I'm really just going to try to do the same things I did for the last two race weekends.

"That means just attacking every practice session, hope that we have clean weekends, get those pole positions and then get those wins in.

"I want to make sure that if I don't do any more races in my whole life as good, then these next five races have to be the ones."

Neither Hamilton nor Rosberg have previously won at Suzuka, which is one of the sport's great circuits with its fast and challenging figure-of-eight layout.

Hamilton won the Japanese Grand Prix in his rookie year in 2007 but that race was held at the Fuji circuit.

His best result at Suzuka remains a third place for McLaren in 2009, while Rosberg has never finished higher than fifth there.

The Japanese circuit has been one of the Red Bull team's favourite stamping grounds, with Germany's Sebastian Vettel winning four of the last five races there.

While Vettel has yet to win this season the reigning world champion arrives on the back of his best result so far, second place in Singapore, where team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was third.

Red Bull need at least three points to prevent Mercedes taking the constructors' title on Sunday if Hamilton and Rosberg finish in the first two places.