Formula One champions Mercedes are now fighting against the odds in their title fight with Red Bull, team boss Toto Wolff said after a fifth consecutive loss at the Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday.
The once dominant Mercedes began the season chasing their eighth consecutive constructors' championship with Lewis Hamilton seeking an unprecedented eighth drivers' title.
Hamilton is now 32 points behind Red Bull's Dutch youth Max Verstappen, who has won five of the nine races, including the last three, and Mercedes is 44 points behind their Honda-powered rivals.
"We are fighting an uphill battle at the moment, against all odds, as it stands," Wolff told reporters at Red Bull Ring.
"It's against the odds for us now, and it's obvious because they have an overall performance advantage.
"All these years I've tried to keep my feet on the ground by not shying away from performance, and now I need to do the opposite."
Wolff admitted the momentum was going in the wrong direction, but said Mercedes would fight to the end and needed to remain optimistic.
"There are 13 or 14 races to go, we are one DNF [retirement] away from Red Bull, no more, and we have lost more points than we lost from our mistakes ... we just need to get our work together as a whole.
"It's far... we just need to step up our game, make fewer mistakes and understand the car better and then we're still massively and thoroughly in the hunt."
Hamilton has converted a first major deficit as a Mercedes driver fighting for the title, but it is his biggest face-off against an outside rival on his own team.
In 2017, the Briton was 25 points behind Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel after six races and 20 points behind the Austrian Grand Prix, which was then also Round 9.
In 2016, Hamilton was 43 points behind German teammate Nico Rosberg, who won the title after four races.
After Austria in 2014, Hamilton was 29 points behind Rosberg but eventually emerged as champions.
"We are miles away from them," he said Sunday of Red Bull's challenge, which Verstappen won three consecutive weekends, including two in the Red Bull ring.
"We have a lot of work to do to try and close that gap."
The next race is a home run for Hamilton, with the Briton having won seven times at Silverstone and with the pit directly to his name.
"I hope our car feels better there," he said after battling the damaged car on Sunday. "I'm just going to go out there and give me whatever I got."