Unhappy with an upgraded aero package his team introduced in Malaysia last week, Lewis Hamilton subsequently reverted to the previous-spec package. In addition to a noticeable improvement to his car, it was clear that teammate Valtteri Bottas, who stuck with the updates, struggled for the remainder of the weekend.

With Hamilton already fearing a backlash from Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel following their problems in Singapore and Malaysia, and under increasing pressure from Red Bull, the Briton is unsure whether to try the new aero package again this weekend or stick with the older version.

It's not decided at the moment, it's a constant discussion," he told reporters. "The guys want to go one direction and I'm hesitant and more feeling for another way.

"I've got a huge amount of trust and belief in the team," he continued, "and I know they want to win just as much as me, so collectively we'll come to an agreement and make sure it's the right decision. It's important to always challenge each other. As a driver I'm always challenging them.

"They'll have numbers and I'll still challenge it even if it's a perfect result because the perfect number doesn't always necessarily feel the greatest on track," he admitted.

"I heard it's going to rain tomorrow so that's going to make it a little bit difficult for us to feel whatever set-up we do have," he said. "We'll probably make a decision by the end of the day, we've got another meeting at the end of the day, so probably by six o'clock we will have decided."

Amidst a growing sense of unease from the German team that the championship is still far from decided, Hamilton insists that his car is unpredictable and changes from race weekend to race weekend.

"I'm confident in the car working at some stage," he said. "It's just this deep into the season that I still have no idea where it's going to be good, where it's going to be great, like Silverstone, or where it's going to be a real struggle, like Malaysia or Singapore. If you look at the last one, we were far off, and all of a sudden we got pole position. I managed to pull out a lap and I didn't even know where it came from.

"If we were going into the race beyond this and we knew what was going to happen it would be kind of dull," he admitted, with a grin. "I like that we're arriving and we don't know. There's some stories that we've been thrown off the bull, that we're on the back foot but we're not. We're still leading the championship, we've still got a great car. Each race is just really trying to understand more about the car because there's constantly something new thrown in the mix, that can catch us off guard."

Check out our Thursday gallery from Suzuka, here.