Following the results of Friday’s practice, the Mercedes drivers were in unusually low places, but explained that this was due to the new weekend format rather than any serious issues.
Lewis Hamilton (16th): “At this stage the format of the weekend has changed and I don’t consider these changes to be good. They mean we just work less on the track, and I was on the same set of tires all through second practice. The situation is not ideal and I think the tire manufacturers will have to throw away many sets of rain tires after this weekend.
In my opinion, it is wrong to shorten the time when fans see cars on the track.
The driving experience wasn’t the best either. It seems that the machine worked worst today, but in the evening we will deal with the settings and continue this work tomorrow. Last year it also happened that at the beginning of the weekend everything was just terrible, but we adjusted the settings, after which the situation was corrected. Overall, I hope our business will be better on Saturday.”
George Russell (20th): “To be honest, the car doesn’t make such a bad impression, but of course our program was different from what other teams were working on, because we used a single set of tyres. Therefore, the results of passing circles say little, and I have no doubt that tomorrow everything will be much better.
We keep focusing on working with the car, trying to improve, knowing that as the weekend goes on we always make progress. Even today we discovered some interesting points, although we only really spent one session on the track. Now we need to analyze the collected information.
In general, we can say that the car as a whole lacks grip, both with a minimum fuel load and with a large amount of fuel in the tank. We need to find out what it’s related to and what needs to be done to add. Overall it obviously wasn’t our best day, but this isn’t the first time I’ve had to say this on a Friday night. Our trading is usually smoother on Saturdays and Sundays.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
