Hamilton: Mercedes 'raised the bar' in 2017

Lewis Hamilton has praised the strength of Mercedes following their successful campaign in which they claimed the drivers' and constructors' championships, and insisted that the Silver Arrows raised the bar in order to beat their nearest rivals, Ferrari, to the respective titles.

The Brit claimed his fourth world championship this season, but reserved praise for the Scuderia and Sebastian Vettel who feuded with Mercedes for the majority of the campaign.

"Naturally you want to compete against the best," he said at an event for Mercedes sponsor Petronas in Kuala Lumpur.

"Everyone has an opinion who's the best but, at least in terms of the number of titles, Sebastian is the one everyone would be targeting.

"So to beat him at his best this year - I think he was performing exceptionally well - and to also have Ferrari who were really delivering some fantastic performances, for us to come out on top really shows the strength in depth and the sheer raising of the bar that we were able to do this year."

Hamilton used a larger car for the 2018 season and although he would eventually emerge victorious in the F1 rankings, he suggested that it was hard to tame at points, while showering plaudits on the Mercedes team behind the scenes who worked tirelessly to improve on the faults.

"There were just some fundamental issues that we'd have with the previous year's car that were magnified in this bigger, beefier car that we had this year," he said.

"There were some races where it really was difficult for us. Ferrari's car generally just worked everywhere and was just consistent everywhere whereas we had some highs and some lows in terms of performance.

“Today was the warmest welcome I’ve ever had here in Malaysia. It was quite emotional to see it all!” - @LewisHamilton ???? https://t.co/hm3gpyPVsH #4TheTeam pic.twitter.com/X0iI8ydLxT — Mercedes-AMG F1 (@MercedesAMGF1) November 29, 2017

"But in the second half of the season particularly we really salvaged a lot from those weaknesses. You look at Singapore - we came out further ahead than we had planned, obviously with the fault of some others, and that was a weekend where we were at our worst performance.

"Yet we came out with most points. There was a couple of others like Malaysia which was going to be difficult for us but we still got a good result.

"The good thing is we learnt a lot and can really improve. We've really understood where the car is strong and where it's weak and now they are really working towards keeping our strength but working and building up the weakness areas."

At the event in Malaysia, when asked if the achievement had sunk it yet, Hamilton confessed that it hadn't fully but witnessing the positive response of the fans was helping.

"Honestly I don't know because it's not yet. When you do days like this you get great responses from people.

"Just arriving here this morning in Malaysia and being at the Twin Towers and having a crazy reception from some of the Petronas employees, but also some of the normal fans, those things help you come to the realisation of what you've achieved."