Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has labelled rivals Ferrari as “very, very fast,” following Friday’s pair of practice sessions for the Russian Grand Prix.
Sebastian Vettel led a 1-2 during the second session at the Sochi Autodrom, while Hamilton wound up fourth, 0.709s behind his title rival, the Briton hindered by a couple of abortive Ultra Soft runs.
Mercedes has never been beaten around the streets of the former Winter Olympics venue but Hamilton remains wary of the pace displayed Vettel and team-mate Kimi Räikkönen across the longer runs in FP2.
“It was a bit of a difficult day for us,” said Hamilton, who trails Vettel by seven points.
“We managed to complete everything that we needed to do on our runs but in terms of the balance of the car, the Ferrari seemed very, very fast on the long runs, so we need to work out how we can improve our pace.
“But there’s still everything to play for. The tyres feel very peaky, so it’s easy to drop out of the window of performance. But when they’re working they seem to be good.”
Team-mate Valtteri Bottas finished third best, 0.670s behind Vettel, and believes Mercedes has to extract more across one-lap, without compromising its long run performance.
“We were learning about the tyres on long runs and short runs and it seems like over one lap we still have work to do to get the maximum out of the Ultra Soft tyres – that’s our focus tonight,” he said.
“But we can’t forget how important the race is. We have started the weekend in the right way. The car feels good and the balance is there.
“A good start but we definitely need to work hard to find some lap time for qualifying.”
