Lewis Hamilton believes that whilst Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport don’t have the best car this year, he can’t begin to lose faith in the championship.
The Brit has had a tough start to the season by his recent standards, taking just two wins and two more podiums in the first seven races. He currently sits second in the championship behind leader Sebastian Vettel, trailing the German by one point (and with one less win).
This revelation comes off the back of a poor Canadian Grand Prix for the team, who were firmly shown-up by Scuderia Ferrari, and which saw Hamilton limp home in fifth place.
This dip in form for Mercedes relative to Ferrari has led many to question whether the silver arrows will be able to defend their title, but not Hamilton. Autosport reported that the Brit believes it would be “weak” to consider anything other than success, and that if you think you might not win, “you’ve already lost“.
“I don’t let that get into my mind, no. That would be the first sign of weakness, and my mind is not weak,” said Hamilton.
“I’m still here to win, I still believe we can win. I have complete confidence in my guys and I’m putting that energy towards them.
“If you think of tennis, or golf, or whatever, in tennis if you look across the net and think ‘I might lose this,’ you’ve already lost.
“It doesn’t matter where I start on the grid, I don’t look at any driver and think, ‘I might lose to that person.’ I’m like, ‘How can I beat them? How can I be better?’ And I’m going to keep doing that until I die.”
Turning his attention to the last few years, Hamilton conceded that whilst the car may have been the best last year, that wasn’t the case now. Nevertheless, he said that he and the team would be doing everything possible to turn their luck around for the remaining races.
“When you guys are writing stories, I think last year there was ‘Mercedes had the best car’ and all those different things – and ultimately we did the better job.
“You probably shouldn’t be writing that right now, because we are not always outperforming the others, but also it’s very close.
“It’s definitely tough when you feel like you have done everything right and you don’t get the result.
“Every single person within the team feels the pain, but we win and we lose together, so it’s just about lifting each other up, pulling together.
“There’s still a long, long way to go. There are good days and bad days ahead.
“We can’t guess when they are going to be, but all we can do is try to prepare the best we can, try to minimise the bad days, the losses, and capitalise on the big days.“
