Hamilton: Mercedes must profit ‘when Ferrari don’t bring A game’

Lewis Hamilton feels Ferrari still holds the pace and performance advantage in the Formula 1 world championship battle but Mercedes has been able to exploit weaknesses having taken back-to-back wins to open up a 24-point lead going into the summer break.

The reigning F1 world champion steered clear of danger to lead from pole position before keeping clear of both teammate Valtteri Bottas and the Ferrari pair of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen to storm to his fifth victory of the year.

Having bolted clear of the faster Ferrari duo during the wet qualifying, going on the Italian squad’s free practice pace, Hamilton has called on his team to push its own performance to close the gap while continuing to take advantage of any mistakes.

“This year we know Ferrari have the upper hand pace wise but all round, performance-wise in terms of strategy to win a championship, it’s not just about speed it’s about how you manage things,” Hamilton said. “As a whole, we have hopefully done a slightly better job up until now.

“We have performance to bring moving forwards. We need to catch all the elements that allows us to beat Ferrari when they don’t bring their A Game.”

Assessing his own race in Hungary, Hamilton felt managing the gap to Bottas over the opening stint and after the pit stop window became key to his victory charge.

“I was taking it easy on my tyres at the beginning, was able to get gap to Valtteri to eight seconds,” he said. “We were matching times when Bottas pitted. We didn’t expect that I was able to match his times as there is usually a crossover.

“That’s what made the race, in terms of its effect on the championship. Last year, I don’t know if we were leading at this point and I think we felt like we were a bit stronger compare to this year.”