Lewis Hamilton to keep his head down and work hard as the Formula 1 merry-go-round heats up

Lewis Hamilton believes that he just needs to keep his head down and keep doing what he’s doing in the cockpit, while waiting for his fortunes to turn.

After a spell of problems not of his making – notably the tyre temperature issues in Monaco, the loosening headrest which cost him victory in Baku and a gearbox change which dropped him five places on the grid in Austria and denied him his shot at the win there this weekend – his Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has suggested that he’s gone through a rough sequence which the team needs to turn around for him as he heads into his home race at Silverstone this weekend.

“I don’t think there’s a call for me to do anything else than I’m already doing,” Hamilton said in Spielberg on Sunday evening, after failing to make the podium for the second race in a row when he could not quite unseat Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo from third place in the wake of his team-mate Valtteri Bottas’ victorious fight against Sebastian Vettel.

The German now leads him by 20 points, with Bottas only 15 behind, and 11 races to go.

“It’s not like the team aren’t on my side or they’re not working hard or I’m not pushing them hard enough,” he continued, “so all I can do is try to inspire them with the drive I had today. When I go and look at the race trace I was actually the quickest out of everyone today, so I actually had the strongest race. Once I finally got past the two cars - the Force India and the Haas early in the race [by the eighth lap] I was 16 seconds behind Valtteri and there was another bunch of seconds that I lost and then at the end I was only six seconds behind so that was actually really positive, looking at it afterwards. I don’t think the points really reflect that, but it is what it is.

“Like I said, there’s nothing else I can do. I’ve just got to keep driving the way I have been and hope things get better.”

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Once again he reiterated a belief he expressed early in the season, that the battle for the title has always been a three-horse race between himself, Vettel, and Bottas.

“Valtteri did a fantastic job today - and yesterday in qualifying - so he thoroughly deserved to win. He's generally had a better season, I would say so far. But yeah, there was never a point that he was never in the fight. I think it was only you guys who potentially suggested that he was never in the battle. I always assumed he still was, and that just shows he still is.”

Meanwhile, there have been suggestions in Italy that Vettel has been offered a new four-year contract with Ferrari, with a salary of around $150 million over the full term. But he may also have an option to go to Mercedes in 2019, though it is believed that if such an option exists it must be taken up by the German manufacturer by August 1. Given the performances of Hamilton and the increasingly impressive Bottas - and possibly Vettel’s recent histrionics - Mercedes may feel no need to change their line-up in 2018.

Red Bull’s recent victory in Baku, courtesy of Daniel Riccardo, made the RB13 a winning car and is thus believed to have altered the dynamics of the contracts of both the Australian and his troubled Dutch team-mate Max Verstappen, who has been getting very unhappy of late with five retirements in the last seven races. Their contracts are believed to hold them to the Milton Keynes team if they have a winning machine.

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Both drivers have had their eyes on the second Ferrari seat currently occupied by Kimi Raikkonen, though Ricciardo said of that situation in an interview just before his win in Baku: “I guess there’s rumours, there’s a few circulating, but no, none of them are true. Look, and I don’t wanna disrespect Red Bull or Ferrari, but it’s… I won’t use the word impossible… But highly, highly unlikely that I will be there next year. Unless I do really s*** and Red Bull get rid of me! Which is not the plan!”

Against expectations, Raikkonen may get yet another one-year extension while Ferrari continue to chase after Verstappen for 2019, though at the weekend hardline team boss Sergio Marchionne pulled no punches with the monosyllabic Finn when he told reporters: “I think Kimi has got to show a higher level of commitment to the process. There are days when I think he's a bit of a laggard, but we'll see."

Insiders at Renault believe that Hamilton’s fellow Brit, Jolyon Palmer, the son of former F1 racer Jonathan Palmer who owns the MotorSport Vision enterprise that runs several British race tracks, may lose his seat after the British GP. The 26 year-old has struggled in his second season with the team, but convincingly outpaced vaunted team-mate Nico Hulkenberg for the first time this season in Austria.

Rumours have suggested that Robert Kubica, who was much rated by Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, might make a comeback in Palmer’s place. The 33-year-old Pole suffered grievous injuries while competing on the Ronde di Andora rally in Testico in Italy in February 2011, when his Skoda Fabia went off the road and struck a steel barrier which penetrated the cockpit and partially severed his right forearm.

Last month, after a long recovery and many operations, Kubica drove an F1 car, a 2012 Renault E20, for the first time since the week before his accident. He impressed personnel so much that he will shortly undertake more tests in a more recent high downforce, hybrid power F1 machine, to determine whether he still has the same level of skill that he demonstrated with BMW Sauber when he fought Hamilton, Raikkonen, Alonso and Felipe Massa for the world championship in 2008.