Lewis Hamilton believes 2011 has been one of the worst years of his career and admits his mistakes have made him an easy target for the press.

11618 - 'I'm an easy target at the moment' - Hamilton

Hamilton has only failed to finish twice this year - once in Canada when he collided with Jenson Button and once in Belgium when he crashed into Kamui Kobayahsi - but has appeared in front of the stewards on six occasions.

"It's just one of those years," he told reporters in Monza. "Everyone goes through tough times and I'm going through it. It's the way of life. Good times will come, and people will make less of the bad times. I've had two DNFs, similar to other people, but I feel I've had worse races, like Monaco which was poor.

"I guess I'm an easy target at the moment because I'm always in trouble. Hopefully, at some stage, I'll move away from that spotlight and into a good light and people will only have good things to say. But it certainly feels like it's been a worse year than I've had previously.

"In 2008 there were incidents then as well, but I guess because I won the championship they were forgotten. For whatever reason people always remember the bad times over the good times, so I'm here to try and put things right and have a much better weekend."

Hamilton is looking forward to this weekend's Italian Grand Prix and believes McLaren should be in good shape.

"I'm excited, confident for the weekend," he added. "If we've got the car, I think we can do it this weekend, and I know what I can do. When things are right, I'm not crashing out then I know I can do a good job. It's about trying to get myself back to doing a solid job, getting some good results. We've still seven races, it's not at all over. Mathematically it's possible, so that gives me hope, that I can still find inspiration to attack."