Lewis Hamilton said his Mercedes felt “completely different” during practice for the Belgian Grand Prix and is hoping the heavens will open during qualifying.
The Silver Arrows have enjoyed their last few weeks having made great strides to challenge the top teams again. The highlight came at Silverstone where they locked out the front row with George Russell on pole, before Hamilton went on to secure his first race victory for 945 days.
The seven-time F1 champion also made it to the podium in Hungary last weekend but was more than a second off the pace of pace-setter Lando Norris at the end of FP2 on Friday. He was clearly quite concerned about both the size of that gap and how his W15 had felt on track.
He said: “It was a pretty bad day. I don’t really know what to say. Obviously it has been feeling great in the past couple of races. That just felt completely different today. So we worked on it – the first session wasn’t great, but then in the second session we made some changes and it started off great.
“And then, when I got to the soft tyre I just couldn’t improve and there was a bunch of balance issues we had throughout the lap. But it was better in this session. But, everyone else went even better. So to be 1.2 seconds behind is not great.”
Hamilton’s Silverstone masterclass came in changeable weather conditions as he once again showed his prowess in the rain. The Briton is hoping for more wet weather in qualifying – and he might just get it with showers washing over the Ardennes Forest.
He added: “If it’s dry then we’re not, at the moment, going to be in the greatest of places. But overnight we can make some changes for sure. I think if it rains, then that opens it up a little bit and hopefully we can do a better job. I think the car should be better in the wet than it is in the dry.”
Team-mate Russell was also not satisfied with how his W15 felt and pointed out the three cars that he feels definitely have superior pace on this track as it stands. “We’ve got some work to do overnight to find some lap time,” he said.
“The McLarens and the Red Bull of Max Verstappen looked to be a step ahead of us today. We need to dig through the data and put in the work in the simulator at Brackley to hopefully unearth some gains and get closer to them. I’m sure we can do that.
“Tomorrow will definitely be a very different day if we are able to do so. The forecast is also for rain tomorrow so that will add another factor into the mix. We have often had good Fridays and the others have caught up come Saturday, so hopefully it will be us doing that this weekend.”