Lewis Hamilton has a chance to end his tale of woe this year thanks to the round-the-clock efforts of his team.

Hamilton surprisingly finished top of the practice timesheets ahead of tomorrow's German Grand Prix in a McLaren it was later revealed was laden with new parts.

After four races without a point and miserably failing to even make it out of the first period of qualifying in the last three, the 24-year-old is confident of finishing in the top eight on Sunday.

If Hamilton does achieve that, he will know exactly who to turn to as engineering director Paddy Lowe confirmed one machinist earlier this week worked 36 hours non-stop to deliver the goods.

"We've still a long way to go, but most importantly these new upgrades are pushing us in the right direction," remarked Hamilton.

"It's a work in progress, but the guys back at the factory have done an incredible job to get these parts to the circuit.

"I've even heard of one guy working a 36-hour non-stop shift to build these parts, which is incredible.

"Hopefully we'll now do our job at the track and try to keep everything moving forward.

"It's still early days, and we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves, but I'm hopeful of being able to get into Q3 and look at scoring a couple of points tomorrow."

After weeks languishing towards the back of the field, as Hamilton found himself fighting for 16th place with Fernando Alonso at the British Grand Prix three weeks ago, the team appear to have given him a car to at least fight with again.

"It has been relentless," remarked Lowe.

"To give you an example, the package we brought here we accelerated it by more than a fortnight to get it here in time.

"A guy has worked at a machine for 36 hours without sleep this week on our floor.

"But that's the spirit of Formula One, and the great competition we have."

Tempering Hamilton's prospects, Lowe added: "I think we all realise the performances are very close.

"The noise you get from the data on a Friday is often higher than the differences between the cars.

"But we're all absolutely delighted to be back there at the top of the sheet, with the job now to translate that into some points tomorrow.

"We have definitely made a step with the car, and Lewis is very happy with it. The pieces we have brought have all worked."

The flip side is only Hamilton, naturally as the number one in the team, has a car with the new parts as time was against bolting them onto that of team-mate Heikki Kovalainen.

"Unfortunately we didn't have enough pieces for Heikki to have the same package, so that's why there was such a difference between the two drivers," added Lowe as Hamilton was 1.5 seconds quicker.

"He'll get some of the bits today, but not all of them, which is something we strive to avoid, but in such short circumstances we have had to do this."

The battle for pole is almost certain to be a shootout between title leader Jenson Button in his Brawn GP and the Red Bulls of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber as they were third, second and fourth quickest respectively behind Hamilton yesterday.