Mercedes revamped its troublesome W14 from the Monaco Grand Prix, revising the floor, front suspension and sidepods in a bid to turn around its campaign and close the gap on Red Bull.
While it feels that it has made some good gains, both Hamilton and team-mate George Russell are well aware that more is needed before the team can hope to challenge for race wins on pure pace.
Mercedes has plans to bring further upgrades but Hamilton admitted ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix that there was no expectation of it unleashing the kind of progress that rival McLaren has made recently.
"Anything's possible, but I don't think we have a plan of that sort of leap in place at the moment," he said.
Asked about why it was taking so long for Mercedes to unlock the downforce gains that it needs to close that gap to Red Bull, Hamilton explained that there were some extremely complex airflows at play that the team needed time to understand.
"The thing we can't see is the airflow throughout the car," he said. "That is just limited when you look in the wind tunnel because there's only a certain amount you can move the car.
"There's simulations with the new rules that we have, and all the new tools we have had to create and understand the flow structures underneath the car.
"All those vortices would blow your mind if you saw what's happening underneath the car, which is a lot different to the previous generations of cars. Working through that just takes time.
"And obviously, you're very limited with resources as well. So you have to be careful which decisions you make.
"If you go full steam ahead in one direction, you could lose weeks of development and it could be tenths of performance, so you have to have to be very methodical in the way they go through that process. I wish it was faster but unfortunately, it is not."
Hamilton said a recent meeting he was a part of, which included the team's key technical figures, was encouraging in showing that everyone was unified in the direction that it needed to take.
And he said he had complete faith in technical director James Allison, who returned to the role earlier this year.
"Things are in the pipeline for many races to come, and that's always the case because it takes time to build things.
"James is great. We've got a really good relationship. He knows when to be stern - he's probably never soft, to be honest!
"We had a great meeting just the other day where we had all the heads of departments within the room, George and I, and just making sure we're on the same page.
"There was great communication and we have 100% faith in them. I think, just as a group, we will get to where we need to be. It is just going to take some time."
