Lewis Hamilton heads into this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix on the back of a fine 2nd place at the Spanish Grand Prix a couple of weeks ago.
The 38-year-old has not a won a Grand Prix since the Saudi Arabian one in Jeddah in December 2021 as Mercedes have struggled in the ground effect era to date.
Photo credit: Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team
The seven-time World Champion is not feeling any extra pressure with such a long win drought, and he believes victories are possible without any actually winning on the track as uplifting results like the one in Barcelona helped show Mercedes are moving in the right direction.
“Yeah, I don’t feel any weight. We’ve gone through a tough patch and we’re kind of like on that up.
“I feel that there’s been a feeling of, like, for example, the last race, and some of the races feel like we’ve had wins. It’s just about perspective.
“Of course, we’ve not been first place, but there have been many wins in the steps that we’ve taken, last race for us as a team to be on the podium, both drivers, that was a win for us.”
Hamilton believes Mercedes are the best team or right up there among the top ones in regards to developing a car through the course of a season. Last season certainly showed their prowess as they managed to win the São Paulo Grand Prix with George Russell in spite of a difficult first part of the season in particular.
“We’re just focused. We know, as I was just saying earlier, that we have that North Star, we know where we need to go. We don’t know everything of how to get there, but we know that together we can get there.
“We’ll keep our heads down and focus on the science. The engineering team is fantastic within the organisation. We’ve got a great development team.
“I honestly think we’ve got the best development rate as good, if not better than any team in the sport.
“So, yeah, just got to keep chipping away.”
It was a very good race from Hamilton in Barcelona as he finished P2 after starting P5 on the grid in the heavily revised W14. Only Max Verstappen clearly had a bit of pace over the Mercedes drivers on race day.
Hamilton, who is going for an eighth victory at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve this weekend, admitted the result in Spain has given him a massive boost of confidence and energised the team as well.
“Yeah, definitely a lot [of confidence]. We’ve been making progress. We’ve all been buzzing I think back at the factory.
“The whole team has this new energy and kind of feel like we’ve got kind of a North Star. We know where we’re going, we know how to get there so everyone’s just churning away and working as hard as possible.
“I am excited coming here. We generally don’t know whether this track suits our car and the car’s characteristics, but the weather may change that and we’ll see.”
