Lewis Hamilton feels Ferrari still holds the p♈ace and performance advantage in the Formula 1 world championship battle but Mercedes has been able to exploit weaknesses having taken back-to-back wins to open up a 24-point lead going into the summ🔯er break.

The reigning F1 world champion steered clear o✱f danger to lead from pole position before keeping clear of both teammate Valtteri Bottas and the Ferrari pair of Sebastian Vettel and Ki♑mi Raikkonen to storm to his fifth victory of the year.

Having bolted clear of the faster Ferrari duo during the wet qualifying, going on t𒉰he Italian squad’s free practice pace, Hamilton has called on his team to push its own performance to close the gap while continuing to take advantage of a♛ny mistakes.

“This year we know Ferrari have the upper h💛and pace wise but all round, performance-wise in terms of strategy tꦇo win a championship, it’s not just about speed it’s about how you manage things,” Hamilton said. “As a whole, we have hopefully done a slightly better job up until now.

“We have performance to bring moving forwards. We need to catch all the e🍷lements that allows us to be🌄at Ferrari when they don’t bring their A Game.”

Assessing his own race in 🦩Hungary, Hamilton felt mana𒐪ging the gap to Bottas over the opening stint and after the pit stop window became key to his victory charge.

“I was taking it easy on my tyres at the beginning, was 𝔉able to get gap to Valtteri to eight seconds,” he said. “We were matching times when Bottas pi༺tted. We didn’t expect that I was able to match his times as there is usually a crossover.

“That’s what made the race, in terms of its effect on🌌 the championship. Last year💃, I don’t know if we were leading at this point and I think we felt like we were a bit stronger compare to this year.”