Mercedes
Hamilton looked confident from the start and spent much of the session at the top of the leaderboard, before being overtaken in the closing stages by his old nemesis Verstappen. Russell dropped back a little further and then missed the start of FP2 thanks to a power unit change as a precaution. He missed a good chunk of the second session before being called back into the pits with a problem a few minutes before the chequered flag fell. That was the bad news; the good news was that Hamilton looked equally quick in FP2, indicating that the old floor appears to be paying off at the moment.
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Lewis Hamilton – FP1: 1:45.859, P2; FP2: 1:43.550, P3
“Today was a really good day. I enjoyed it from the start as the car felt strong from the first laps on track. We made some positive steps in the set-up. We didn’t have to improve anything further and we kept improving throughout. Pace-wise, we didn’t complete a huge number of laps in our long run in FP2. We’ll need to do some comparisons tonight to see where our relative speed is. Our usual competitors looked strong but I think we’re there or close to there. That’s encouraging and was our hope for this weekend. Nevertheless, we’ll remain cautious and alert. We’ll work hard tonight to try and find some more gains and see what we can do in qualifying tomorrow.”
George Russell – FP1: 1:46.516, P8; FP2: 1:44.536, P9
“Today hasn’t been the smoothest Friday we’ve ever had. Unfortunately, we lost a bit of running time with a precautionary power unit change before FP2. Once we got out on track, I wasn’t entirely happy with the balance of the car. I was struggling to get the tyres in the right window and was lacking a bit of confidence. I’ll work hard overnight to improve that, improve my performance for tomorrow and close the gap. The good news is that Lewis looked very quick. We’re encouraged that the car is strong and that we can be competitive this weekend. It seems like it’s very close between a number of teams, and Ferrari in particular looks strong. However, if we can make improvements overnight, we can aim to be in the fight for qualifying and the race on Sunday.”
Andrew Shovlin, Director of Track Engineering
“Lewis had two decent sessions and ended the day happy with the car. His pace also seemed reasonable, although we know where we need to work. Overall, we are happy with how his weekend has started. As has been the case at the last few races, it seems the front end is very tight in terms of individual laps, so we will be working hard overnight to find every minute of lap time. Compared to Lewis, George had a more difficult day. He was not very happy with the balance of the car in FP1, so we spent that session trying to improve it. Shortly after FP1 finished, we detected a problem with the power unit which led us to be cautious about changing it in FP2. Unfortunately, that cost him 25 minutes of valuable track time and, although we were able to run on both tyres, the programme was compromised. We will try to make up some of the lost ground with George tomorrow in FP3.”