Mercedes revamped its troublesome W14 from the Monaco Grand Prix, revising the floor, front suspension and sidepods in a bid to turn around its campaign and close the gap to Red Bull.
While it feels that it has made some good gains, both Hamilton and team-mate George Russell are well aware that more is needed before the team can hope to challenge for race wins on pure pace.
Mercedes has plans to bring further upgrades but Hamilton admitted ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix that there was no expectation of it unleashing the kind of progress that rival McLaren has made recently.
"Anything's possible, but I don't think we have a plan of that sort of leap in place at the moment," he said.
Asked about why it was taking so long for Mercedes to unlock the downforce gains that it needs to close that gap to Red Bull, Hamilton explained that there were some extremely complex airflows at play that the team needed time to understand.
"The thing we can't see is the airflow throughout the car," he said. "That is just limited when you look in the wind tunnel because there's only a certain amount you can move the car.
"There's simulations with the new rules that we have, and all the new tools we have had to create and understand the flow structures underneath the car.
"All those vortices would blow your mind if you saw what's happening underneath the car, which is a lot different to the previous generations of cars. Working through that just takes time.
Source: Autosport