Mercedes
It was a quiet opening to the weekend for Mercedes, who had both drivers down the order and neither sounding overly happy with how their car felt straight out of the box. Those complaints intensified in FP2, Hamilton in particular unhappy with the amount of understeer he was experiencing. Russell at least grabbed a spot in the top 10, but he locked up late on and went straight into the wall, breaking his front wing but lucky to escape without more serious damage.
Lewis Hamilton – FP1: 1:32.679, P12; FP2: 1:31.709, P11
“It was a very challenging day for us. I didn’t feel particularly connected with the car throughout. We tried many different things on the set-up to try and find improvements but couldn’t find any major breakthrough. We were working hard as a team to make gains and get closer to the pace at the front, but we weren’t able to do so by the end of FP2. It was challenging to know exactly where we should put the car in terms of set-up and that is something we will be working hard on overnight. We need to find some additional speed otherwise we will be looking at a difficult Saturday tomorrow.”
George Russell – FP1: 1:33.334, P16; FP2: 1:31.488, P7
“That was quite a challenging Friday for us. We didn’t have the pace of the frontrunners today and we need to work hard overnight to understand why. The car wasn’t feeling as well connected as it did here last year, or in recent races. We need to get to the bottom of that if we are to have a weekend where we can challenge at the front. I am sure we will find some answers though once we go through all the data this evening.
“There were a lot of surprises out there when you looked at the timing screens. Williams and VCARB seemed to be particularly quick compared to recent races, whilst the Red Bulls looked to be struggling a little. The McLarens and the Ferraris looked to have a comfortable advantage over everyone else meanwhile and we’ve clearly got work on our hands to be in with a chance of racing them this weekend.”
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director
“That was one of the trickier Friday’s of the year so far. We experimented with different set-ups across the cars in FP1, aiming to try and counter some of the challenges we’d faced particularly on our Medium tyre stint last weekend in Baku. Unfortunately, the track conditions didn’t give us a brilliant read on this, so we converged more closely for FP2. Neither driver was particularly happy with the balance throughout the session, although we made some progress on our long run.
“Whilst that second hour of running was more encouraging, we’ve still got a good chunk of work to do overnight. McLaren and Ferrari, in particular Norris and Leclerc, looked to be a step ahead of the rest of the field. We will have to find some big improvements to be in the fight with them tomorrow. We’ve also got one eye on some of the teams behind us. We will need to find gains overnight if we are to have a smoother run through qualifying and that is what we are focused on doing.”