Lewis Hamilton believes Red Bull are quicker now than they have been all season but warned Mercedes would close the gap in Monza this weekend.
Max Verstappen proved a class apart as he dominated his home race, the Dutch Grand Prix, on Sunday to the delight of tens of thousands of partisan spectators.
It left Hamilton and Mercedes scratching their heads as Verstappen moved into the championship lead ahead of another race on the calendar in six days’ time, the Italian Grand Prix.
Of the task ahead, Hamilton said: “They put in an upgrade at the last race and they’re quick. That’s the quickest I think they’ve been all year. I think they’ve taken a bit of a step ahead.”
Of the next anticipated head-to-head in Monza, he added: “I really don’t know how it’s going to go. We will be on lower downforce and maybe we can be closer there, maybe. But it’s going to be tough.
“We just keep our heads down and keep working, keep pushing. We are ahead in the team championship, which is great, but of course we need to pick up some speed – that’s what we want – to be able to win races in future.”
Verstappen leads the championship by three points with seven grand prix victories in 2021 to his title rival’s four and with eight races left on the calendar for this season.
Despite Red Bull’s increased pace in Zandvoort, new championship leader Verstappen warned the standings would ebb and flow between him and Hamilton in the ensuing weeks.
Going into the summer break, he said: “I was like ‘we really need to speed things up here because otherwise they’re going to run away it’ and I think we did. It’s heading in the right direction.
“There are still quite a lot of different kinds of tracks coming up so it will definitely swing both ways and we just have to keep on it and keep pushing and keep bringing new bits for the car.”
