Lewis Hamilton has hailed his Mercedes team after becoming the first driver this season to take back-to-back victories, saying the Silver Arrows are now working better than they’ve ever worked before.

With wins in Belgium and Italy on consecutive weekends, Hamilton has turned a 14-point deficit to Sebastian Vettel in the drivers’ standings into a three-point advantage, and whilst pleased with the way he’s been performing, the Briton says much of the credit for that turnaround lies with his team.

“The ultimate goal is just to make sure you do the best job each weekend and the last two, I'm really happy with my performance,” he said. “My engineers have done an exceptional job, we're working better than we've ever worked and it's really starting to reflect in our results.

“[Monza was] just an exceptional weekend from the team,” he added to UK broadcasters Channel 4. “This team has really just shown, these past two weeks, such strength collectively. We had the bosses in Italy from Daimler, from Mercedes, from Petronas who are so heavily involved.

“For me it’s really inspiring to see that they’re so involved and so keen for us to be the best, because that gives me confidence that it can continue for many years to come.