Lewis Hamilton’s claim in Austria today that “I truly believe we can get a race win this year” would have been stating the obvious had he uttered it during any other Formula 1 season over the past decade.
But given the struggles of Mercedes in the first half of the campaign, it’s significant that Hamilton can now legitimately offer this appraisal of its prospects without being accused of mindless optimism.
It’s important to note that what Hamilton said was a conditional, can rather than will win. But despite that caveat, this claim is indicative of a team that now at least appears to be on the right track after several false dawns.
Following the early troubles, the premature optimism triggered by the Spanish Grand Prix upgrade that did largely solve the porpoising problem, then the difficulties with the ride quality that followed in Monaco, Azerbaijan and Canada led to Hamilton appearing to hit rock bottom after Friday practice in Montreal.
But since then, things have improved for him and Mercedes – starting with an encouraging third place in the Canadian Grand Prix and then a run to third at Silverstone after the introduction of another upgrade package, this time focused on performance improvement rather than troubleshooting.
It’s this trend Hamilton hopes will give Mercedes a shot at salvaging at least a win from this troubled campaign.
“It was a long way back,” said Hamilton when asked if he feels wins are possible this year. “Earlier this year, definitely I wasn’t sure we would ever get a win in this car.
“Obviously, that’s not the way we like to think, but it was a feeling that ‘Jesus that’s a long, long way to catch everyone up’ knowing the progress everyone makes.
“But definitely, it’s hugely encouraging particularly as for a long, long time we would make changes and not see it do what we said it was going to do or improve the car.
“And then [we made] the good step in Barcelona, but then we had several difficult races following it.
“And then we just had this last race, or the last two races, which were quite strong. And that really encouraged us that we’re moving in the right direction, that there really is potential in the car and with a little bit more digging and a little bit more hard work, hopefully, we can get a bit closer to having a chance to win a race.
“So I truly believe we can get a race win this year.”
It’s important to note that possibility of winning is predicated on Mercedes making continued progress given it does still have a performance deficit to overcome, particularly in terms of qualifying pace.
There are potentially two reasons for optimism at Mercedes, both in terms of the recent steps made with the car and the technical directive that will come into play at the French Grand Prix in two weeks’ time.
This will introduce a metric to limit the vertical oscillations a driver is subjected to, but crucially also tightens on teams running flexi-floors. There is a feeling within Mercedes that this could help it make gains on Red Bull and Ferrari, but whether that proves to be the case remains to be seen.
The upgrade introduced in Barcelona was characterised as a shift of concept by trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, with the changes to the floor, sidepod and front suspension fairings at Silverstone building on that.
Shovlin has said the team is “going full steam ahead trying to develop this and get into the fight [at the front]”, with further improvements to come.
“In the first few races, we were just fighting to survive and the drivers were fighting to survive with a car that was incredibly difficult to work with,” said Shovlin during the British Grand Prix weekend.
“Barcelona was useful for us because we had something that wasn’t bouncing around on every circuit that we went to. But clearly that run of three street tracks highlighted another weakness.
“We’re just going through it, looking for the problems and then we’ll try and apply our engineering skills to solving them.
“But I would say that the route that we want to take now is becoming increasingly clear and that’s encouraging from a development point of view.
“And this update’s the first one along the line that we started to create in Barcelona, this is the first one that we brought to the track, and it’s encouraging to see this work.”
Hamilton’s run to third place at Silverstone, a race that he could conceivably have won, is a further boost.
The high-speed and relatively smooth track played to the strengths of the Mercedes, with this weekend’s event at the Red Bull Ring expected to be tougher, meaning it was the best chance the team has had so far.
“In Silverstone, there was definitely potential to win the race,” said Hamilton.
“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, we needed not to have lost the time in the pitstop. In a perfect world, if we didn’t have the crash at the beginning I would have been third [on the first lap].
“We’ve always struggled in Austria so it’s going to be hard to win here knowing the combination of corners, but it’s not impossible. I’m hoping that we’re pleasantly surprised tomorrow, but I might be wrong.
“I’m staying hopeful. The best thing to do is arrive positive and navigate from there.”
Although several factors did play against Mercedes at Silverstone, some cards fell in its favour such as Max Verstappen picking up debris from Red Bull stablemate Yuki Tsunoda’s AlphaTauri that hobbled his challenge when he likely would have won comfortably.
That illustrates how far Mercedes still has to go, given it required a favourable track and the likely winner suffering problems to create circumstances where a victory might have been possible – and even then with a fair wind.
But with Mercedes now confident in its development direction and resolved to make further improvements, the upcoming imposition of the technical directive, Hamilton himself far more positive than he was just a month ago and George Russell also performing well, things are going in the right direction.
So can Mercedes win, as Hamilton suggests? It could. But you can’t say with any certainty that it will win a race this year given the strength of the opposition and the problems it still has to overcome.
All that is certain is that its prospects appear to be improving. But it’s going to require a car that’s not only quicker, but that can also be at its best across a wider range of circuits, to maximise the chances of avoiding a win-less season.
