Lewis Hamilton is targeting race wins in his final season with Mercedes but doubts he will be able to challenge for the championship.
After winning six world championship titles with Mercedes and taken 82 grand prix victories, Hamilton has not won a race for over two years. While Mercedes changed their car concept for 2024, Hamilton has scored just eight points in the first two rounds of the new season, and rivals Red Bull have continued to dominate.
However he believes Mercedes’s latest design can become a race winner. “I do think we have an amazing car,” Hamilton told Sky. “There’s a lot of potential in it. I think we just haven’t maximised it at the moment – through set-up, through ultimately mistakes.
“We were obviously not happy with the performance of those first couple of races. But I think there’s a lot more potential in that we just haven’t quite extracted yet. So that’s what everyone’s focus is on, just trying to understand the car.”
Hamilton says the W15 drives better than last year’s W14 and has already been improved over how it drove in the pre-season test in Bahrain at the end of February.
“There’s definitely elements that we’ve made big improvements with this car,” he said. “Just in terms of just generally driving it, it feels like a much, much better car, much more like a race car. But it can drop off one end or the other end. It’s a narrow working window with these types of cars.”
Despite Mercedes failing to finish on the podium in the opening two rounds for the second time in the ground effect era, Hamilton says the former world champions still have what it takes to win.
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“I do believe that we’ve still got that winning mindset within the team,” he said. “I have absolute faith that these guys are going to fix any of the problems that we have. We will get there.”
However Hamilton believes Max Verstappen’s early lead in the drivers’ championship will likely put his 2021 title rival out of reach.
“The fact that Max has 50 points and we only have eight points after two races, if you just think logically about it – you have to be conscious that it’s a very long season also so things can change – but it’s going to be very hard to catch those guys.
“Their car, they drop it on the track and it just works. For us, we are really, really grinding to pick up that performance and get it to where we need to be.
“The dream and the goal is…
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