Lewis Hamilton has warned Max Verstappen that Mercedes will get “even stronger” in the coming races.

The Silver Arrows have come to the fore and proved with Hamilton’s win at the British Grand Prix that they are capable of fighting at the front again. And that makes for three teams who have all shown their strength in recent weeks up against Red Bull.

Recent upgrades have seen Mercedes finally make significant progress on their cars after a couple of seasons of stagnation. And with more new parts on the way the seven-time F1 champion is feeling good about his chances of continuing to take the fight to Verstappen.

Hamilton said: “When we started the season and we had a car where we weren’t going anywhere near Red Bull, for example, anywhere near looking like we would ever get a win through the year. That for me felt like it would be kind of bittersweet at the end of the season, where you’ve not had something like this.

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“The fact that we’ve really all come together, everyone’s done such a great job to get the car into a place where we’re feeling much more comfortable, really changes from the foundation from last year. So [I’m] not leaving on a low, but leaving on a high, which has been our goal.

“There is still a long, long way to go. The car, by no means, is the car the quickest car on the grid right now. I think we are super close and I think hopefully with the next upgrade perhaps, we will be in an even stronger position to really, really be fighting at the front row more consistently.”

Team principal Toto Wolff confirmed that those next upgrades are due to come over the next two races before the summer break, starting with the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Austrian expressed his delight that his team finally seems to have figured out how to add significant performance to this generation of cars.

Toto Wolff is delighted with Mercedes’ recent progress ( 
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He said: “When you consider that five races ago we weren’t even a contender for the podium, which looked like the third year of non-performance, then it clicked. Suddenly, everything that didn’t make sense made sense. and the results of the development directions are back like in the old days. We are finding performance, we’re putting it on the car, and it translates into lap time.”

And Hamilton was happy to declare that his victory, unlike that of team-mate George Russell in Austria a week earlier, was achieved on merit and didn’t need a big slice of luck. He added: “George’s win last week was amazing, but it wasn’t on pure pace.

“I think this weekend was the first time we did it on pure pace, qualifying on the front row and after that, in that first stint, both of us pulling away from everybody else. Then, ultimately, I think with the conditions today, the driver is able to make a bit of a difference.”