Lewis Hamilton believes Ferrari does hold the pace advantage over Mercedes at this stage of the season but puts his recent success down to better performance.
The reigning champion ended July with two straight wins in Germany and Hungary, both times benefitting from rain as main rival Sebastian Vettel crashed out at Hockenheim before both he and teammate Valtteri Bottas jumped ahead in a wet qualifying at the Hungaroring.
As a result, Hamilton holds a 24-point lead with nine races to go, the largest margin seen all year, and now he hopes to sustain it.
"As I said before I think Ferrari have had a slightly better package but we've delivered ours better and hopefully that will make the difference,'' the 33-year-old was quoted by F1i.com.
"Hopefully in this second part of the season, we will be able to upgrade our package so it's a little bit stronger than theirs and if we keep bringing that 'A game' then hopefully they'll have no return to our ace serve."
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Now in the midst of the summer break, the competitive order could well change again when teams bring more upgrades to the Belgian Grand Prix later this month, for Hamilton too, these four weeks can also be about personal improvement.
"Each year you do something different in your break,'' said the four-time world champion. "You use and conserve your energy in a different way. I think I've got a good setup generally though this break.
"The race physically I am good but there's always areas you can improve, there's always things you can improve on. I am not going to say what they are but I am going to be working on some of those things through this break.
"There's still going to be some studying. I just got to keep working hard. We've got to keep improving."
