Hamilton: Car has untapped potential

The Briton lost his world championship lead to Red Bull's Mark Webber in Hungary before the summer break after a run of frustrating races. But Hamilton said he was still highly satisfied with his car and thinks it just needs tweaks to allow its full potential to be revealed.

"Every time I have gone to the track I've done the Friday and Saturday and my comments are 'this is the best the car has felt over this track', but it's still not quick enough," said Hamilton. "We believe there is still some untapped downforce in the car that we have not been able to use at the moment, or at least draw out.

The team is working flat out to try and pull that out, and I am trying to do everything I can to encourage and pay very close attention to what is going on and keep a close eye on everything."

He admitted that McLaren was likely to be in the same difficult position in Belgium this weekend as it had been at the Hungaroring prior to the summer shutdown.

"I don't think anything will change after the shutdown," said Hamilton. "I expect the car to be the same as after the last race. We have to do some more tests while here on Friday and Saturday to get more information back to understand where extra time and extra downforce is, and only when we do that can we really move forward.

"It is not starting again, it is continuing. We have to do everything we can to not allow them to pull too far ahead."

But Hamilton does believe that the McLaren will cope better with the fast sweeps of Spa than it did with the Hungaroring's slow corners.

"Obviously there are a lot of high speed corners here but you still need efficient downforce," he said. "We should be a little bit better here than we were in Hungary - I am looking forward to tomorrow. Hope the weather clears up as it's not so great for us at the moment."