Lewis Hamilton is “praying” for a return to form at the British Grand Prix amid Red Bull’s recent wave of success.
The seven-time world champion is currently 32 points behind championship leader Max Verstappen, the biggest deficit Hamilton has had to a driver since 2016, of course, the year Nico Rosberg won his only Formula 1 title.
But while Verstappen and Red Bull won the 70th Anniversary race at Silverstone last year, at the British GP, Hamilton has won six of the past seven years, and the Mercedes driver hopes a return home can bring about a change in the momentum.
“These past races have been difficult and he [Verstappen] is pretty much just cruising ahead so there’s really not much I can do about that,” he was quoted by GPFans.com.
Also Read:
- Official: Hamilton signs new two-year deal at Mercedes until 2023
- Red Bull: ‘Fantastic’ to end Mercedes’ ‘annihilation’ but they will ‘bounce back’
“Of course, I’m praying for a different scenario in the next race. You look at the [Red Bull] car and it’s just on rails so we’re giving it absolutely everything.
“This past two weeks I’ve been to the factory each week trying to extract as much as I can from the car but our car just doesn’t go well here [in Austria] for some reason, and I really hope that it does in the next ones.”
After some initial confusion, Mercedes have confirmed a final upgrade for the W12 will be introduced at Silverstone.
But Hamilton has doubts it will be enough to overhaul the Red Bull.
“We have a little bit coming but it’s not going to close the gap enough so we’ve got to do some more work [to do],” he said.
“We’re miles away from them, so we need all hands on deck, which I know there already are.
“They (Red Bull) have brought a lot of upgrades clearly over the past few races and we haven’t brought any. We’ve got to bring some and find as much performance as possible, otherwise, this will be the result most often.”
As for Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, he is slightly more optimistic, even making a tongue-in-cheek prediction for the British GP.
“The result looks, I think, worse in terms of pace than we were,” he told Sky Sports after Valtteri Bottas finished 17 seconds behind Verstappen in Austria.
“We were stuck behind the McLaren and I think in pace we probably could have been there – maybe not enough to win the race but right there, which is a step forward.
“Overall, I think damage limitation maybe. I think we will go to Silverstone and blow everybody away, finish one and two, 30 seconds in advance of everybody else,” Wolff cheekily suggested.
“I am always the sceptical person, half-empty glass, but in this case, I am seeing the positives and the positives are there are 13 races to go.
“We are one DNF away from Red Bull, no more, and we have lost more points than we should have. We have lost due to our own mistakes.
“Clearly in Austria, or in the last few races, we didn’t have the performance that we must have in order to fight Red Bull.
“We are very aware of that and we need to just get our act together overall in every single area and hopefully perform better on the other tracks.”