(Motorsport) Seven time World Champion Lewis Hamilton had contrasting fortunes at the Canadian Grand Prix. From publicly saying that his Mercedes W13 was “undrivable” and a “disaster” in friday’s Final Practice session, the 37 year old went on to secure his second podium finish of the season, finishing behind reigning World Champion Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. Hamilton secured his 184th podium finish in a season that has been disappointing to say the least and the British racing driver is hoping for more consistency for the remainder of the season.

In an interview before the British Grand Prix, Hamilton said “We're just trying to work… we're just trying to progress as a team. Moving forward, I think we'll be a little bit more cautious on doing too many experiments as it really does hinder you through the weekend, especially if you only have practice one and two in the dry and don't get a FP3, for example. I think there are lots of learnings from this weekend and improvements that we can make moving forwards. I really hope, moving to Silverstone… it's such an important race for us and for me and so I just want to be in a battle with these guys. I think we're better in medium and high-speed corners probably, than we are in the low-speed corners but we have bouncing, so I don't know how it's going to be through Copse and all those places." 

Meanwhile, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff remains cautiously optimistic about his team’s chances despite seeing significant improvement in Montreal. Wolff said “You can see at the hairpin they put in new asphalt so we suffer less from the stiffness of the car, which is the main problem, but before the Safety Car came out at the end we were actually quicker than Carlos Sainz and Verstappen but you're picking out a few laps and saying 'yeah, we are back' but I don't think that's the case here. We just need to keep working.

“We just need to develop the car in a different window that we had. We had it really low on the ground but clearly that doesn't function so I think we have a development direction. We didn't get it right in many areas, but we own the problem and we need to fix it.” Looking ahead to Silverstone, Wolff added: "If we are able to run the car low then we can be competitive but after Barcelona we've been cheering 'we're back in the championship fight', so let's see."

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