Lewis Hamilton has expressed his belief that Red Bull Racing is on track to win every race this year, citing the challenging Formula 1 regulations that make it difficult for their competitors to catch up.
Max Verstappen’s triumph at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve added another win to Red Bull’s unbeaten streak of eight victories this season. The team also secured 10 out of 11 wins in the latter half of the previous season.
Despite being unable to challenge his championship rival Verstappen for a second consecutive year, Hamilton stated that he doesn’t feel frustrated.
“You know how it is and you know what you’re faced with,” he said.
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“There’s nothing I can do about their amazing performance.
“It’s likely that they will win every race, moving forwards, this year unless the Astons and us put a lot more performance on the cars, or their car doesn’t finish.”
Mercedes has made progress with their car after introducing a significant upgrade three races ago.
Although Hamilton mentioned that the car doesn’t feel significantly different to drive, it has started to generate more downforce.
“In truth, it doesn’t feel a huge difference to the beginning of the year,” Hamilton admitted.
“There are some elements of the car which do feel different, obviously, with the upgrade.
“But it’s just simply a little bit more downforce on the car.
“The characteristics of the car are very, very similar to what we had earlier on in the year.”
Hamilton emphasised that more substantial changes are necessary for Mercedes to close the gap to their rivals.
He acknowledged that the current car’s characteristics aren’t sufficient to beat the Red Bull and that significant alterations are needed for next year’s car.
However, Hamilton recognised the difficulty of achieving such gains within the current regulations.
“It’s not easy with the regulations to find the amount of performance that they have, advantage-wise,” he explained.
“They’ve got to be 30 points up on us in certain points through the lap. We’ve got some work to do.”
Despite the challenges, Hamilton remains positive and content with being back in the mix.
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He expressed his hope for a more level playing field to recreate the thrilling races witnessed in 2021, with all three top teams engaged in a tight battle.
“I’m happy to firstly be back in the mix,” Hamilton affirmed after finishing third in the race behind Verstappen and Fernando Alonso.
“And I’m just hoping at some stage we can have it all a little bit more level, so we can get back to some of the good races we had back in 2021.
“And to have all three of us in a super-tight battle would be sick.”