(Motorsports news) Only five days after finishing second to Max Verstappen on the road at COTA, Hamilton was 11th in FP1 and eighth in FP2, 0.338s behind the pacesetting Red Bull driver in a tightly packed field. George Russell finished 10th in FP2 after handing over his car to Mercedes junior driver Frederik Vesti for the first session.
Following some alterations during the break, Hamilton and Russell ran different setups in the later session, and neither was pleased with the results. “Not that great,” Hamilton admitted this. “Yeah, dubious – not dubious, but not the best.” Today was a little difficult in the car. “The car is a night and day difference from last week.” I truly don’t know what to say, Hamilton added.
“With this one, you never know what you’re going to get. She’s good on certain days and bad on others. It’s difficult to withdraw the lap.” Hamilton is still optimistic that the car can be upgraded for Saturday. “I think there is definitely performance there,” that’s what he stated. “It’s just attempting to extract it, and it’s quite peaky this weekend, possibly just with the aero map or whatever.” So we’ll be working on it all night.
“But it wasn’t a fun day in comparison to FP1 in Austin.” And, yes, we’re a little off, but hopefully, we can find something overnight, and maybe the car will be nicer to drive on Saturday.” When asked how much money could be taken from the car, he replied, “I’m not sure.” Again, you never know what to expect from this vehicle. And maybe we’ll make the changes and ramp up the pace.
“I believe there was some performance in there to be closer, and possibly in the top three. However, we need to figure out how to make it easier for us to extract that performance.” So that’s what we’re going to concentrate on tonight.” Russell, who had to play catch-up after missing FP1, stated that the poor performance was due to a number of issues. He, like Hamilton, feels that the car can be enhanced in an instant.
“It was a bit of a tricky session, there was rain around here and there, we had the prototype Pirelli tyre, and it’s a very tight field out there,” said the Briton. “But I believe there is potential; I believe we have a lot of work to do overnight; it’s very tight. Especially with some unexpected cars, you saw some cars in the top 10 that we weren’t expecting to see, but we feel like we still have a lot to work on.”
But we also believe we have the opportunity to do so. Russell believes that the challenging Friday has helped the squad prepare for Saturday. “I think we’ve been probably in the wrong window today,” that’s what he stated. “Lewis and I were running two different setups, and we were probably both in the wrong window, so that gave us an indication that probably halfway between both is the best place to be.”
“Of course, we want to fight for pole position, and Max Verstappen is always half a step ahead, but I think anybody, if you get it right, can fight for the front two rows,” he continued. We must ensure that this is us.”
