Lewis Hamilton is expecting a difficult weekend ahead as he admits Mercedes have a “bit of catching up to do” after they missed out on the tyre test.
The outfit was banned from taking part in the Young Driver Test because it participated in a private test with Pirelli. However with repeated tyre failures, the test was changed to include race drivers and revised tyres.
That meant the impact of missing out on the test hit the team harder than they initially expected.
Hamilton is anticipating a difficult weekend spent learning about the new rubber, but he is confident that Mercedes can catch up.
“It’s going to be tough this weekend definitely – the conditions will not help. Plus, we haven’t driven the tyres as everyone else has,” he said on Thursday.
“We’ve got a bit of catching up to do, but that’s what we do best and we just have to work as hard as we can this weekend to try to understand the tyres and put ourselves in the best position possible. We have a lot of work to do to continue to improve our race pace, but I anticipate it will be a difficult weekend.
“To be honest, it doesn’t really faze me,” he added. “I think it would have definitely helped if we were there and we have an understanding of how to set up the car with the new tyres and to see what kind of characteristics they have and how they behave on long runs and all those kind of things but we will try and find that out this weekend.
“At the end of the day, it is what it is and we will just try to do the best with what we’ve got. It’s a great team, I have no doubt that we will make up for the lost time.”
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