Lewis Hamilton's championship battle with Nico Rosberg will go to the wire, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has predicted, despite the British driver taking charge of the title race for the first time this season following his win in Hungary.
Hamilton, the defending champion, is now six points clear of his Mercedes team-mate Rosberg after winning five of the last six grands prix.
It is a remarkable turnaround for the Briton who feared his chances of winning a third successive title were all but over after slipping 43 points behind Rosberg with a combination of bad luck and car trouble plaguing the early part of his season.
Since Hamilton and Rosberg crashed out of the Spanish Grand Prix in May, however, the former has scored 49 more points than his team-mate. After their collision at Spa in 2014, Hamilton went on a similar hot streak, winning six of the next seven races, to win the championship.
"I don't think that one can see a pattern in there," Wolff said. "We've been with each other four years now and it's important that they concentrate on their strengths, and you will see a couple of races go towards one, and then towards the other.
"We had the same discussion when Nico was doing really well at the end of the season. Can he maintain that momentum into next year? He did, was outperforming Lewis quite a lot at the beginning, and everyone was saying is this the new Nico?
"But then it turned around, and there is no single event I could attribute to a change of performance."
Asked if it will now be difficult for Rosberg to reclaim the championship momentum, Wolff added: "No, because at the beginning of the season he won so many points against Lewis you can see it swings both directions.
"We'll see that swing through the season, and my feeling is that the championship will go to the end."
Hamilton may now be in charge of the title race as he bids to become the first British driver to win the title on four occasions.
But the 31-year-old, who celebrated his fifth victory in Hungary - a number greater than any other driver in the history of the sport - with several childhood friends in Budapest on Sunday night, will not change his approach.
"Honestly it's not massive," said Hamilton as he reflected on his six-point lead ahead of the final race before the sport's summer break in Germany on Sunday. "Maybe after the next couple of days I'll feel it, but I'm still in the mentality of chasing.
"It's been great to come back from the struggle that we had at the beginning of the year - I'm very proud of that - but I am conscious there's a long way to go.
"It's important we try and go from strength to strength, and I need to make sure I stay on it."
Source: PA-WIRE
