Lewis Hamilton & Valtteri Bottas remain pretty content about their performance despite a subdued practice day at the British Grand Prix.
Unusually high temperatures at Silverstone gave Mercedes a chance to test the W11 in conditions that are normally their weakest, which is perhaps why neither driver led a session on Friday.
And Hamilton himself did acknowledge after three pretty comfortable races so far in terms of setting up his car, the situation was a little different this time around.
“[It was] quite a difficult day to be honest,” he said.
“It’s always windy here, which is actually a good thing about this track, you’ve got some wind in different directions, but it’s made it really tricky today with the car.
“The balance is not as good as I’d like, so we’re just going to work on it tonight and try and see if we can figure it out.
“It’s not a disaster, but definitely been a hard day of driving.”
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In second practice, Hamilton found himself down in fifth, albeit only three-tenths off the pace set by Lance Stroll despite failing to get a clean lap in across two runs.
“The balance was not right and I wasn’t feeling comfortable in general, Hamilton explained. “We went back out and I think the tyres weren’t as good as the first one.
“We’ll work through it – we’ve got great engineers.
“That’s the great thing about this team, we continue to dive deep into the details and hopefully make some good changes overnight.”
Teammate Valtteri Bottas was also upbeat Mercedes could unlock performance looking ahead to qualifying and the race, though did note a closer battle with the other top teams is also possible.
“The first session particularly was a bit more tricky balance-wise,” the Finn said. “Obviously [there is] still work to do, but I think practice two was actually not a bad feeling.
“The gaps are quite small and normally we are able to make some good steps for qualifying, so not too worried really because overall feeling is quite good.
“Racing Point and Red Bull, they seem quite strong as well. But it’s going to be completely different conditions tomorrow with a lot less track temp, and the wind is going change direction quite a bit.
“It normally has quite a big effect on this track.”
