After a trying weekend in which the Formula One lead was snatched from his grasp during the Canadian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton remains optimistic he can regain the advantage in the title fight.

However the Mercedes chief, Toto Wolff, warned the team’s performance in Montreal was a “wake-up call” they could not afford to ignore.

Hamilton went into the Montreal race on Sunday with a 14-point lead over Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel but had an unusually poor weekend while Vettel was in imperious form. The German won in a serene run from pole to flag and Hamilton could manage only fifth, hampered by an engine cooling problem.

Vettel heads the world championship by one point, the third time the lead has changed hands between the two drivers in seven races.

“I am still here to win, I still believe we can win,” Hamilton said. “I have complete confidence in my guys and am putting my energy into it.

“In any sport if you think ‘I might lose this’ you have already lost. Doesn’t matter where I start on the grid I don’t look at any driver and think: ‘I might lose to that person.’ I think: ‘How can I better them? How can I be better?’ I am going to keep doing that.”

Mercedes will have their new engine at the next race in France on 24 June and Hamilton was optimistic the Canada result may prove positive in the long run. “We have a lot of potential in this car. There are a lot of races to come, the engines have to go a long way, things will happen, that’s why I am grateful for this.

“It is not a great performance and we would want more points but if we look back in 10 races’ time and we were fifth and it wasn’t a DNF, I think we would be grateful for it.”

The cooling problem is not the first problem the team have faced this year. In Australia a software glitch cost Hamilton a likely win. He took a grid penalty for a gearbox problem in Bahrain, while in China the decision not to pit him under the safety car proved costly.

“This is a major wake-up call for every single member of the Mercedes team,” Wolff said. “I’m the opposite of confident moving forward. Everybody needs to assess how to improve our performance. This year’s championship is going to be decided by the one who makes the least mistakes. This is the new reality. It is a three-way team fight and six cars can win races. We cannot take anything for granted and think it is going to be a walk in the park.”

Charlie Whiting said the error that resulted in the model Winnie Harlow waving the chequered flag a lap too soon was the result of a miscommunication between local officials. The “starter” was misled by a TV graphic showing the number of laps and mistakenly told Harlow to wave the flag.

“He just showed it a lap early, or he told the flag waver to show it a lap early, so it wasn’t anything to do with the fact it was a celebrity flag waver,” the F1 race director said. “Just a simple miscommunication, a very regrettable one. You’re dealing with a lot of human beings, different countries, different languages, and it’s not always absolutely perfect.”