Lewis Hamilton intends to keep pushing harder than ever to win a fourth Formula One title after he nudged ahead in the drivers’ championship for the first time this season with victory at the Italian Grand Prix.

Hamilton, who leads Sebastian Vettel by three points, believes Mercedes are learning more from every race and will keep improving over the next seven grands prix.

Lewis Hamilton embraces ‘villain’ tag after taking lead in F1 title race Read more

He was untouchable at Monza. He took pole position with a magnificent lap in heavy rain on Saturday and in doing so secured the record of pole positions from Michael Schumacher, with his 69th. He followed it with a dominant run at the front of Sunday’s race where he was untroubled by the opposition.

His victory leaves the season balanced on a knife edge, with the potential for a thrilling run-in for the title. There is almost nothing to chose between the two drivers. Ferrari are likely to have the advantage at the next race in Singapore and Mercedes at Suzuka and possibly Malaysia but the remaining four races – US, Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi – may well depend on which team can eke out the most development in their car and which driver can put it to best use. If one team do not make a significant step forward, the title fight could turn out to be the one F1 has desperately needed during the turbo-hybrid era.

Having won at Spa, Hamilton became the first driver to take consecutive wins this season and has won three of the last four meetings – including the British Grand Prix – and it is a sequence he is eager to continue.

“I still have to apply myself like I have in the last four races,” he said. “I was 20 points behind and now we’ve changed the picture, so maybe he [Vettel] can feel that way for a while. There is a real solidarity and unity in our team this year.”

Vettel had held the lead since the two drivers were tied at the second race in China but he could do nothing to prevent Hamilton taking the top spot in Italy, where the German finished third. Ferrari had shown they were closer to Mercedes on pace in Belgium, with Vettel in second place and having maintained a position within two seconds of Hamilton for almost the entire race.

They had been expected to be similarly competitive at Monza but where Mercedes had improved Ferrari had not, as their president, Sergio Marchionne, observed. “I think we screwed up from Spa into here,” he said. “Now, we need to go back to the factory and find out which way the car went sideways.”

Vettel was losing almost half a second a lap to Hamilton on the high-speed, low-downforce sweep of Monza and finished 36 seconds behind.

The British driver was intensely pleased with how Mercedes had adapted their car for the Italian Grand Prix. “In hindsight you always say you could have done this or you could have done that,” he said of the close fight in Belgium. “At Spa there were sections where Ferrari were really killing us but our guys analysed these and found areas in the set-up where we were not so comfortable. That helped us here.”

Hamilton has six wins to Vettel’s four. Vettel won in Australia, Bahrain, Monaco and Hungary and the next race in Singapore is expected to play to his car’s strengths.

Hamilton remains confident Mercedes can be competitive. “I’m sure there is more we have learned to put us in a better position in Singapore,” he said. “I still expect Ferrari to be better there in the slow and medium-speed corners but I’m going there with the attitude that we will be trying to win.”

The team had a poor Singapore in 2015 but had improved last year when Nico Rosberg won the race and the Mercedes executive director, Toto Wolff, believed the team could further adapt their car to the track.

“We have seen this year that slow, twisty circuits have suited Red Bull and Ferrari,” he said. “But I don’t think that is a pattern you can’t break. Nevertheless, I do expect it to be a more difficult weekend for us than Monza or Spa or Silverstone because of those characteristics.”

Wolff attributed Hamilton’s success to him coming back strongly from F1’s summer break. Hamilton has admitted the rivalry with Vettel had been draining but said after Monza that the break had been the perfect tonic.

It was “a real good balance between playtime and training,” he said. “We had been flat out all season and it was the perfect time to recharge the batteries. Now they are recharged and I’m at the top of my battery pack again.”