Hamilton STILL believes Ferrari are quicker!

Surely it’s just mind games at this point? Lewis Hamilton is leading the championship by 24 points and has won five of the last nine races, but he still insists that his Mercedes car is not as fast as title rival Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari.

To add to the confusion from Hamilton’s opinion, Mercedes are leading in the constructors’ standings as well, despite Valtteri Bottas’ awful luck in 2018.

It would be fair to say that Mercedes did not start the season as the quickest car, it took until the fourth race in Azerbaijan to get their first race win, but since then they have been the most dominant car and have won the last two races, in Germany and Hungary.

Hamilton says that Mercedes are ahead because of strategy and in-race knowhow rather than outright pace.

He said: "This year we all know that Ferrari really do have the upper hand pace-wise.

“But I think all around, performance-wise, in terms of strategy and, because to win a championship is not just about speed.

“It’s about how you manage things, the strategy calls you make, mistakes, all these different things all weigh up. 

“I think, as a whole, we have hopefully done a slightly better job up until now."

Despite this, the four-time champion says that Mercedes need to step up some aspects of their performance.

“So, we’ve got work to do, we’ve got things to improve, we’ve got performance to bring moving forwards,” he said.

“We’ve got to try and catch them – but we’ve got to continue to keep rising with all the other elements, which allows us to beat the Ferraris when they don’t bring their A game.”