SPIELBERG, Austria — For the first time this year, Lewis Hamilton is confident Mercedes can win a race in Formula One this season.
Hamilton has gone 11 races without a win in F1, which is the longest victory drought of his career.
His Mercedes team started the season a long way off the pace of rivals Ferrari and Red Bull and Hamilton himself has failed to finish higher than third.
As early as the fourth round at Imola, Hamilton wrote off his chances of winning the championship this year after a series of bad results.
However, performance steps taken by Mercedes at the Spanish Grand Prix in May and British Grand Prix last weekend have given Hamilton hope that a race win is possible this year.
“A long way back, earlier this year, I definitely wasn’t sure that we’d get a win in this car,” Hamilton said ahead of this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix. “That was definitely not the way we like to think but it was that feeling that ‘Jesus, there’s a long, long way to catch everyone up’.
“But it’s definitely been hugely encouraging. For a long, long time, we would make changes and not see it do what it says it was going to do and improve the car.
“It was a good step in Barcelona but then we had several difficult races following it. Then we just had these last two races which were quite strong and that’s really encouraging us in the right direction and that there really is potential in the car.
“With a little bit more digging and a little more hard work, hopefully we can get closer to winning a race, so I truly believe we can win a race win this year.”
Hamilton believes Mercedes had the performance to win at Silverstone but is not convinced that will translate to a similar level of competitiveness in Austria.
“Definitely in Silverstone there was definitely potential to win the race,” Hamilton said. “But with our current performance we’re not on exactly the same level as the two teams ahead. We needed everything to align, so we didn’t need that Safety Car at the end.
“Coming here, we’ve always struggled in Austria, so it’s going to be hard to win here knowing the combination of corners, but not impossible. The weather is up and down. I’m hoping that I’ll be pleasantly surprised tomorrow, but I might be wrong. I’ll find out. But I’m staying hopeful. The best thing you can do is arrive hopeful and positive and navigate from there.”