Hamilton doubts F1 title chances

Lewis Hamilton doubts he can beat Sebastian Vettel to the drivers' title if Mercedes are unable to seriously improve their 2018 car. Hamilton took an unlikely victory in Baku last time out to move four points above Vettel at the top of the standings, but he has been largely outperformed by the Ferrari man this year.

A crash with Max Verstappen in Shanghai and poor fortune under the safety car have cost Vettel in the last two grands prix, although three consecutive pole positions suggest that the German is back to his title-winning best.

Although he appears to be in an enviable situation, Hamilton admits he is perhaps not a worthy championship leader and says similar performances will not yield a fifth title come the end of the season.

"I have zero comfortability [in leading]," he said.

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"Since the last race I have not thought for one second that I am leading the World Championship, it is not in my mind, it is not that it is not important to me, it is just empty at the moment.

"There is a long, long way to go. Imagine if I got excited now knowing that we still have all the problems, it doesn't mean anything. What is important is where you are in the end of the year.

"If this weekend we happen to have got on top of the issues we have with the car and start to be more consistent then I can be a lot happier because I know then I can punch either at my weight or a little bit above my weight.

"But at the moment I am punching below my weight, and that is not sufficient enough to win a World Championship.

"We have been capitalising on circumstances like the outcome of the last race, so I will take it for now but in the long term the team cannot continue to rely on that."

Although acutely aware of the need to improve, Hamilton appeared to forecast that Mercedes will not have a fix in place for the Spanish Grand Prix.

"I can't really expand too much on it, because if we knew it all, we could do it," he said.

"We are constantly working on a solution. The set-up direction, or getting the car set up for the weekend, has been interesting but the underlying factor comes down to how we utilise the tyres.

"People cannot write that I didn't do testing. I did the Pirelli test last year, I did the end of season test, the mid-season test, which I really don't like doing, but the tyres are behaving differently this year.

"There is that and the balance we are having with the tyres is shifting a little bit and from one session to another, we change the car set-up, it does not correlate with what the tyres should do, so it is a moving target that we are struggling to get steady.

"That's really what we are working on and trying on how I can minimise those losses from the set up."