Lewis Hamilton believes his troublesome Mercedes will win this season, but perhaps not at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix.

The seven-time world champion has arrived in Spielberg for Sunday’s race full of optimism that his car is finally showing its potential after a mostly bleak first half of the year.

Last weekend’s British Grand Prix extended his winless run to 11 races, the longest in his standout career.

But third-placed Hamilton was almost as happy as if he, and not Carlos Sainz, had taken the chequered flag after his Mercedes at last battled shoulder to shoulder with the Red Bulls and Ferraris.

This was a massive improvement on the under-performing machine shackled by bouncing, or porpoising, as Mercedes grappled with the radical new design regulations brought in this term to produce closer racing.

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