Lewis Hamilton fears Mercedes could face more defeats at the hands of Ferrari and Red Bull before the end of 2019.
Victory for Sebastian Vettel this past weekend in Singapore meant the German manufacturer has now gone three races without a win for just the second time since the start of 2014.
In fact, Hamilton and Mercedes have only won twice in the past seven races and there is a worry from the championship leader that his team has slipped after their initial domination.
“It’s got tighter and tighter as the season has gone on, we’ve learnt from that, but at the same time we’ve just got to be doing a better job,” he said via Crash.net.
“We did such a great job at the beginning of the year that we’ve got this gap, but that gap could easily go. I’m under no illusions about that, about my gap in the championship. It’s not won yet."
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What was also concerning at Marina Bay was the way in which Mercedes lost as poor strategy left them trailing despite arguably having the fastest race car.
“We’ve got to pull our socks up basically. We can squeeze more out of this car and this team, individually, together we can do better," Hamilton continued.
“We win and lose as a team so we all feel not great right now and I think it’s a good thing because if there’s anyone in the team feeling relaxed right now they need talking to because we should all be feeling the pain.”
Looking ahead, this weekend does see one of the team's strongest circuits in Sochi, a place they have never lost, but after that Hamilton concedes the close battle with Ferrari and Red Bull will continue.
“Upgrades are something that takes months and months. You can’t just decide now that we want an upgrade next week, it’s months and months of planning,” he said.
"I’m sure we do have upgrades coming at some stage, I don’t know when, I don’t think it’s the next one, and I don’t know how much is coming over the last races that we have but these next few races are going to be tough.”
