Lewis Hamilton believes Mercedes has performed better as a team compared to Ferrari in the first half of the 2018 Formula One season.
It's widely accepted that Ferrari has a performance advantage over Mercedes but despite this fact, Sebastian Vettel trails Hamilton by 24 points in the race for this year's drivers' title. Last time out in Hungary, Hamilton claimed a dominant win after storming to pole position in the wet -- at a circuit which was expected to favour Ferrari and Red Bull.
Hamilton has called on Mercedes to up its game in the second half of the season as it looks to close the performance deficit to the Italian manufacturer.
"As I said before I think Ferrari have had a slightly better package but we've delivered ours better and hopefully that will make the difference,'' Hamilton said following his sixth victory at the Hungaroring. "Hopefully in this second part of the season, we will be able to upgrade our package so it's a little bit stronger than theirs and if we keep bringing that 'A game' then hopefully they'll have no return to our ace serve.''
In 2017, Hamilton returned from the summer break in the form of his life winning five of the six races following the summer shutdown. The reigning champion admits he hasn't been perfect in 2018 but knows what areas he needs to improve in if he is to beat Vettel to a fifth title.
"Each year you do something different in your break,'' Hamilton added. "You use and conserve your energy in a different way. I think I've got a good setup generally though this break. The race physically I am good but there's always areas you can improve, there's always things you can improve on.
"I am not going to say what they are but I am going to be working on some of those things through this break. There's still going to be some studying. I just got to keep working hard. We've got to keep improving."