Lewis Hamilton admits that he is "counting down the days" until Mercedes bring their Formula 1 upgrade after a season-worst showing in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Hamilton qualified fifth and pitted early on to swap to Hard tyres, but lost out under the Safety Car when it was deployed for the stricken Nyck de Vries on the next lap.
He rebounded to sixth, executing a move on teammate George Russell after the restart at Turn 1, but could not make further progress to pass the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz.
He finished 46.1s behind race-winner Sergio Perez and revealed post-race that he cannot wait for the much-vaunted upgrades to come at Imola, after the next race in Miami.
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Hamilton's wait for upgrades
"There was great prep before coming here with a couple of days at the factory, and yeah, I'm really proud of the team," Hamilton explained to Sky Sports F1.
"The mentality in the team is great, it is such a winning mindset and so focused on progressing and getting to where we know we can get to - it is just taking some steps.
"I don't think there were any mistakes or any lessons, there is not failure, we just need to get to where we want to be.
"Everyone is positive in the garage, and those upgrades will hopefully put us much more in the fight.
"We already had quite a few races [waiting] for this upgrade, so it's been counting down the days, counting down the weeks.
"We currently don't know how good the upgrade will be, we know it will be starting something new for us.
"Miami should be better for us I hope, as we were bouncing there a lot [last year]."
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Balve Bains is joined by RacingNews365.com Editorial Director Dieter Rencken and Asia Correspondent Michael Butterworth to dissect the key talking points from the last week in F1.
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