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Cape Town - Lewis Hamilton has admitted that Mercedes have been "quite fortunate" in the first half of the F1 campaign, and says they can't afford to "take anything for granted".
Hamilton appears to be well on his way to a sixth Drivers' Championship as he has healthy 62-point lead over team-mate Valtteri Bottas in the standings, having won eight of 12 races thus far.
His win at the final race before the summer break, the Hungarian Grand Prix, means if he wins five of the remaining nine races he will join Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel on a record 13 wins for a season.
But as with all sporting greats, Hamilton is not resting on his laurels.
When asked by Autosport.com to reflect on his eight wins, he replied: "I look at those races and eight out of 12, there's still some missing.
"So how did we miss those? How were we not perfect on those weekends?
"We've also had races where we were quite fortunate, Ferrari were quicker but through sometimes team error and sometimes driver error, it's put them in the position of not winning.
"Like Baku or Bahrain, where they had the car failure and otherwise would have won.
"It just shows you how on the edge we all are, and you can't take anything for granted."
Ferrari have had the pace this campaign, but as pointed out by the Brit their strategies haven't always worked out while Red Bull have also proved that they can compete for race wins with Max Verstappen securing two victories.
Hence Hamilton being wary and urging his team to "continue to deliver".
"This second half of the season could be much, much harder in the sense we'll continue to have this battle," he said.
"We've obviously got a package, we just have to continue to arrive and deliver like we have.
"I can tell you we're not perfect, by far. We've still got areas we will continue to improve."
