Lewis Hamilton described his Mercedes as “tough to drive” during Friday practice at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix.
Neither Hamilton nor George Russell were in the top 10 in either of the day’s two sessions, more than a second off the pace laid down by Max Verstappen.
Of concern was that both Mercedes drivers opted for different set-ups and were displeased with their packages.
That comes despite the introduction of a new front wing for this event.
“He’s one way, he’s like over here with the set-up; I’m over here,” Hamilton explained.
“He was like, ‘I’m thinking of coming to where you are, but then your lap time’s slow’.
“And I was like, ‘Well, I was thinking of coming to where you are’.”
The concern for Hamilton was that changes made to the Mercedes during the session were having no impact on track at Silverstone.
It was also a handful regardless of which compound was fitted – though Mercedes didn’t complete any soft tyre running in Free Practice 1.
“It’s a tough car to drive,” Hamilton said.
“No matter what we do to set-up and that, it continues to be a tough car to drive.
“On a single lap, I didn’t feel any improvement between tyres, which just shows us something’s wrong, you know, we’re missing something.
“And then, on the long run, didn’t seem too bad, so that’s a positive at least.”
Russell was similarly downbeat about his performance though is hopeful of different conditions on Saturday bringing with them different fortunes.
“Definitely not our finest Friday,” he said.
“Need to try and get to the bottom of it because the pace in FP1 was looking reasonably good on the medium tyre; we thought we were right up there if we took the soft.
“But in FP2, we were nowhere, so just need to understand that.”
An hour of practice remains, beginning at 11:30 local time on Saturday (20:30 AEST).
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