Lewis Hamilton is "counting down the days" until Mercedes can finally introduce its first major upgrade package of the season.
His words came after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, in which he and George Russell struggled to make much of an impression. Hamilton qualified fifth but lost a place, while his team-mate could only improve to eighth from 11th on the grid.
Hamilton managed to beat the Aston Martin driven by Lance Stroll. But Fernando Alonso finished above him again while both Red Bull and Ferrari cars also scored more points than the Brits, as all the positivity from their strong showing in Australia earlier this month ebbed away.
And the seven-time world champion admitted that his team probably couldn't have hoped for much more than they got from their car in Baku. "I think there was great prep before coming here – a couple of days at the factory, plenty of sim running – and I'm really proud of the team. Big thank you to everyone back at the factory," he said.
"The mentality of the team is great. There's such a winning mindset and everyone's so focused on progressing and getting to where we know we can get to, it's just taking some steps. So, I don't think there are any mistakes, any lessons, I don't think this is failure. I think this is just the build to getting where we need to be.
"So, everyone's staying positive in the garage, everyone's just doing their job to the best of their ability and that's all we can ask for right now until we get those upgrades, which will hopefully put us much more in the fight."
The upgrades he was referring to are scheduled to arrive in two races' time. Mercedes will have to do the best with what they have next weekend in Miami, before some improvements will hopefully be in place for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
"I think we knew already from quite early on that we would have quite a few races until this upgrade," added Hamilton. "So it's just counting the days down or counting the weeks down.
"We don't currently quite know exactly how good the upgrade will be – we know it will be the start of something new for us. But Miami should be... I hope it's better pace-wise. Last year we were bouncing there a lot. We're in a much better place this year with our car, so I hope we're a lot closer to the guys there."
