Seven-time F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton says that upcoming British Grand Prix upgrade will not enough to compete with Red Bull Racing, who encountered third straight defeat to championship leader Max Verstappen at Red Bull Ring for Austrian Grand Prix.

Yesterday Austrian Grand Prix clearly shows that, another disappointing race for Silver-Arrows, especially Hamilton, who struggled with floor damage. The Brit already too much struggled with race pace, who trapped behind the Lando Norris in the initial part of the race.

After overtaking the Norris, Lewis was unable to keep better pace against team-mate Valtteri Bottas and Norris behind, as the Brit struggled to finish with his damaged Mercedes.

“We have a little bit coming [British GP] but it’s not going to close the gap enough,” Hamilton said. “So, we’ve got to do some more work.”

“I already said before the race that it would be very hard to beat Max. It was frustrating to lose so much downforce on the rear of the car and not to be able to hold on to second. It is a lot of points lost today.

“I wasn’t going over the kerbs more than anybody else so I have no idea where the damage happened but there was a lot of damage. I would have finished an easy second and all of a sudden it broke.”

Hamilton added: “We are miles away from them (Red Bull) so we have a lot of work to do. We need all hands-on deck.

“We have got to bring some upgrades and find some performance otherwise this will most often be the result.”

We’ve not been strong enough at Red Bull Ring – Shovlin

“A disappointing one for Lewis after he lost a lot of downforce with some bodywork damage before the stop. Our task today was made harder by our poor qualifying but second and third was realistically our best result and around half distance it looked like we were on track to achieve that.” Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes trackside engineering director said

“Lewis took a lot out of his tyres trying to pass in the first stint but once he’d got through on lap 20, Max was too far up the road for us to mount a challenge so we were just looking for any opportunities with safety cars.”

“It looks like the bodywork damage for Lewis was at the end of lap 29 just before we came in. The downforce loss was around six or seven tenths but as it was all from the rear, the balance become difficult and we were damaging the rears with sliding. That dropped Lewis from second to fourth but at least we had Valtteri up there to pick up the position.”

“We know we’ve not been strong enough at this track over a range of conditions so we need to go away and work hard to understand that. For the British Grand Prix we’ll bring an update package and it’s also a track that has suited our car in recent years. We really missed the fans in 2020 but we’ll be working hard over the next few days to recover our form and hopefully can give them something to cheer about on race day.” He concluded