Lewis Hamilton scored his third consecutive top-ten finish in Sunday's Austrian Grand Prix, a turnaround result after his Friday crash that shows that Mercedes is "slowly getting there".
Starting from P8, Hamilton battled among the midfield contenders and eventually broke clear of the group to settle among the top four, before he inherited third following the demise of Ferrari's Carlos Sainz.
While happy with his performance, Hamilton paid first and foremost a heartfelt tribute to his team whose crews were forced to work overtime after Friday's eventful qualifying session in which both Hamilton and teammate George Russell had crashed.
"I really feel great; I’m so happy with today, especially after such a difficult start to the weekend," said Hamilton who finished one place ahead of Russell.
"We were looking so good in qualifying and then I crashed, and it was about getting your head around that.
"The team worked so hard to build a new car from me. Naturally that affects everything, it affects our budget, that affects so many people who have to build new parts so that’s never a good feeling so to get up there and get some good points for the team is hopefully a small token of my appreciation.
"I’m really happy to get third and fourth."
Mercedes' level of performance relative to Ferrari and Red Bull has improved of late, even if the latter were out of reach in Austria.
Hamilton believes the Brackely squad will continue to inch closer to its rivals as long as it keeps pushing.
"I don’t know why they were so quick here," he commented. "We’ll just keep pushing. We’re not too bad, some of our laps were comparable so we’re slowly getting there.
"We just need to keep chipping away."
So far, Hamilton remains the only driver to have finished every race in 2022. The 103-time Grand Prix winner currently sits third in the Drivers' standings with 94 points, 22 points behind Russell in P5.
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