Lewis Hamilton returned to work this week after he arrived from his winter break to the Mercedes formula 1 team's headquarters in Northamptonshire, Central England. The British racing driver is looking to win his seventh F1 Drivers' title and equal Michael Schumacher's record and he revealed that he is feeling at "another level" going into the new season.
The Mercedes driver spent most of his winter break in the United States and revealed earlier that he is ready to be a machine in 2020 to defend his championship. Apart from the training he also admitted that it was great spending time with family, especially, his father, who has had a major role in Hamilton's successful career.
"It has been an incredible winter," said Hamilton in an online message to his fans, as quoted on the Agence France-Presse. "I have spent a lot of time with family and friends. I would say probably one of the best times has been with my dad, and secondly, the training has been different this year."
"The feeling I have, both physically and mentally, is on another level compared to last year. That is a real positive," he added. "I know you guys are gunning for title number seven but we have to take it one step at a time."
"We have no idea where we are going to stand compared to everybody else, so we have to be more efficient in our test programme this year, particularly as we have less testing time. We still have a lot of work to do," Hamilton said.
Mercedes will launch their 2020 challenger at their headquarters on Friday with Hamilton set to take the wheel and complete the first shakedown at the Silverstone Circuit in the United Kingdom. They will enter the season as favorites again, but Red Bull Racing and Ferrari are hoping their cars will be able to challenge the Silver Arrows on a more consistent basis.
The Italian team were the first of the big three to reveal their car on Feb. 11 but will only take to the track when testing gets underway on Feb. 19 at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya. Meanwhile, Red Bull launched their car on Wednesday and Max Verstappen took it for its first outing which the Dutchman labelled "positive".
