Lewis Hamilton gave his fans and his team hope he may yet be able to win a Formula 1 race this season.
The seven-time world champion boasts a remarkable record of winning races. He has never before failed to take victory at least once in every year since he entered the sport, but that run is in serious danger of coming to an end in the next few weeks.
Just two races remain of the season, and Hamilton has yet to stand on the top step of a podium in 2022. Even despite having a much more competitive car in the last two races, he has still been unable to deliver the win Mercedes crave so much.
At the United States Grand Prix he led late on following a slow pit stop for Max Verstappen, but the champion still managed to catch up to and pass Hamilton to take the victory. And he was the man on top again in Mexico on Sunday, despite the Mercedes cars looking very fast throughout the whole weekend.
While he may well be gutted to have missed those opportunities, Hamilton was still upbeat after that race in Mexico City. "I'm really happy to be up here, and to be able to split the Red Bulls, I think, is a huge result for us," he declared.
"[We] brought an upgrade into the last race and that seems to have kind of closed the gap a little bit – they still have the edge, I think – but I don't know, I think it was amazing for us to be fighting in qualifying and have the second and third.
"I was speaking about in strategy about us taking a risk with one of the cars at least doing something different. I had a gut feeling that they will be on the soft to start with and when everyone took their blankets off, everyone around us was on the softs and we're on the mediums. At that moment. I thought that we may be in trouble.
"But then again, it's a long, long race, so I thought maybe they'll be on a two-stop. But that medium tyre just had no drop-off. So ultimately, I think they were on the right tyre strategy. But I am grateful I was able to just about keep up within that first stint. That’s huge, to be able to keep up with a Red Bull."
To continue his streak of winning every year, he will have to take the chequered flag first either in Brazil or Abu Dhabi. Both have been happy hinting grounds for him in the past, so Hamilton may yet feel he can deliver the win his team has been working so hard to get.
