Mercedes not getting 'cocky or overly confident', says Hamilton

Mercedes is now running with the ball unwillingly handed to it by Ferrari, but the German team is keeping its positiveness in check, insists Lewis Hamilton.

The current leader of the world championship conceded earlier this summer that the team's W09 had been outpaced by the Scuderia's SF71-H in terms of pure performance, although Hamilton believed the Silver Arrows squad had performed better as a package.

That assessment likely still holds true with the House of Maranello stumbling on home ground at Monza despite putting both its drivers on pole, and beaten again, fair and square, in Singapore.

While the momentum has now shifted from one leading camp to the other, Hamilton dismisses any notion of complacency, all too aware that his current 40-point lead could suddenly fade on the back of a painful mistake, misfortune or a turnaround by Ferrari.

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"There are still a lot of points available," he says.

"As an athlete, as a team and as competitors, you have to stay positive. Hope and belief are the two things you always have to make sure that you have.

"I can assure you, we as a team we are not getting cocky or overly confident. We are diligent and working as hard as we can. We want to just keep plugging away."

Hamilton knows that luck isn't a strategy, and that his team's interests - and therefore his own - are better served by a unilateral approach to every race, a thorough focus on the job at hand.

"I don't look at it and think that we lucked in. We honestly don't waste any time wondering what they [Ferrari] are doing or how they are feeling or if they are feeling pressure if they are happy or unhappy," adds the Brit.

"There is nothing we can do about them. All we can do is be the best we can be that weekend and hopefully that is good enough. If it's not then we will keep working.

"In my mind I need to win every race. It's as simple as that. There will be weekends where we know we will be stronger and weekends like this one where we knew that we would be behind - but we still have to believe that we can win," he insists.

"I didn't think that I would have 40 points [advantage] at this point. Of course, it's nice having that - but I's not the end until it's mathematically impossible. I will keep fighting."

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