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Lewis Hamilton is hoping Mercedes can find a solution to his car’s “night-and-day” performance as team-mate George Russell suggested they were in “the wrong window”.
Just five days on from extolling the virtues of his W14 across the weekend at the United States Grand Prix after the introduction of a new floor – albeit he was disqualified from the race for excessive rear skid pan wear – the car was unrecognisable around the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, the scene of this weekend Mexico City GP.
Hamilton and Russell finished the second practice session off the pace compared to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, with the seven-time F1 champion seventh quickest, but a third of a second adrift, with Russell three places further back, and over half a second down.
Declaring his session “a bit of a struggle”, he added: “The car is night-and-day different compared to last week.
“You just never know what you’re going to get with this one. Some days she’s great and some days she’s not.
“It’s hard to extract the lap. I think there is definitely performance there, it’s just trying to extract it.”
Describing his car as “quite peaky”, Hamilton is now hoping the engineers can take steps to turn it into a ‘great’ car again.
“We’re going to work on it, but it definitely wasn’t a fun day compared to P1 in Austin,” he said. “We’re a bit off, but hopefully we can find something and (for qualifying) maybe the car will be nicer to drive.”
It is not the first time this season Mercedes has been off the pace on Friday before making changes overnight that have resulted in Hamilton and Russell being more competitive on Saturday.
Having faith in the team to do likewise again, Hamilton said: “Again, you just never know what to expect with this car. Maybe we will make the changes and pick that pace up.
“I think there is definitely some performance in there to be closer to maybe (being) in the top three, but we’ve got to figure out how to make it easier for us to be able to extract that performance.”
Russell, who gave way to Fredrik Vesti for FP1 as part of the team’s mandatory commitments toward giving a rookie driver an opportunity, only had one hour to evaluate his car with FP2.
Russell was left “surprised” at the end of the session to see Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas fourth quickest and Daniel Ricciardo in his AlphaTauri two places below the Finn.
“We’ve been put in the wrong window,” said Russell. “Lewis and I were running two different set-ups and we probably both weren’t in the right window, so that’s given us an indication that probably halfway between both is the right place to be.
“It’s frustrating at the moment to have a sort of negative car and not have the best of days but through those difficult moments you learn probably more than when the car is in a better place. That’s what practice is all about.”
Given the unexpected FP2 results, Russell cannot call how qualifying will unfold.
“(Alex) Albon was super quick in FP1, and then you had Danny Ric and Bottas up there in FP2,” reflected Russell.
“Of course, we want to be fighting for pole position, but Max is always half a step ahead. I think anybody, if you get it right, can be fighting for the front two rows. We need to make sure that’s us.”
