Hamilton: '2017 car won't improve by the end of the season'

Championship leader Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes will have to compose with its W08's current weaknesses until the end of the season.

For all its success this year, represented by its  nine race wins, Mercedes' W08 suffers from fundamental flaws which mostly emerge on high-downforce circuits.

While the team addressed part of its car's flaws after a disappointing performance at Monaco earlier this year, the German outfit and its drivers are still wary when it comes to racing in a high-downforce environment where Ferrari's SF70H and Red Bull's RB13 perform better.

"I think this weekend really shows the strengths and weaknesses of our car and the characteristics," Hamilton said before he left Singapore.

"In the dry conditions we were nowhere, so to come to probably our weakest circuit, perhaps second or first to Monaco, and win is obviously a great result.

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"We've got to stay on our toes and keep trying to extract everything out of this car.

"We understand what we can do, potentially for the future, to make it better. It won't happen with this car; potentially for the next one.

"We've just got to make sure [when] we do it that it doesn't make it worse, because it's actually pretty good elsewhere."

Mercedes may have caught a lucky in Singapore last weekend, but there remains several venues ahead which could still throw a spanner into the Mercedes works.

"Coming up we have Japan where you need a lot of downforce, so that definitely won't be our strongest circuit," Hamilton said.

"In Brazil the others will be strong as well, and in Mexico the teams with the most downforce could have the upper hand.

"Honestly I think it's going to be very close. It's hard to predict," he said. "We'll find out when we get there."

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