Lewis Hamilton rued some extensive set-up changes for FP2 at the Australian Grand Prix contributing to “one of the worst sessions I’ve had for a long time” in Formula 1.
Hamilton has endured a disappointing start to his final Mercedes campaign, trundling home ninth in Saudi Arabia to back up his seventh-place finish in the Bahrain opener.
However, ahead of this weekend’s round at the Albert Park Circuit, the Briton was adamant that the revamped Mercedes W15 car is not the “evil sister” of its predecessor.
But while Hamilton wound up ninth in a compact field in the opening practice hour, he slumped to 18th place in the session session as he abandoned two push efforts.
As it strives to understand the problems with its third iteration ground effect package, Mercedes opted to revert to a previous specification of floor design for practice.
Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff revealed that it also trialled some aggressive tweaks on Hamilton’s car which “backfired” and led to his plight down the timesheets.
“I don’t feel great. We had one of the worst sessions I’ve probably had for a long time,” Hamilton reflected.
“P1 generally felt quite good. The car actually in P1 felt the best it’s ever felt. And it just got worse and worse.
“And then I made some changes, some big changes into P2. And yeah, it was tough.”
Hamilton admitted his wretched session made him “the least confident I’ve ever felt with this with this car” but admitted there were “positives from the P1 run we did”.
Meanwhile, team-mate George Russell sustained an encouraging run on the opposite side of the Mercedes garage, coming within 0.033s of the best time during FP1.
The Briton followed that third-place classification up with sixth in the second hour and was more positive in his assessment of the handling of his Mercedes W15 car.
“I felt pretty comfortable out there from the beginning, we’ve made some changes in Saudi and Bahrain,” he reviewed.
“We’re still trying to understand this car further, every single lap is so valuable, you learn more and more about it, trying to get it into the sweet spot.
“Obviously now we’ll have the whole team back at the factory working on the simulator, trying to get more out of it, so let’s see what tomorrow brings.
“It’s always when everybody has had a night’s sleep and you arrive the next day, it’s often very different.”
Despite contending that a mistake at Turn 12 prevented him from replicating his third place from FP1, Russell remains cautious over Mercedes’ weekend prospects.
“We were pushing the limits, a few moments here and there but all under control, in the end,” he said.
“It seems pretty tight out there, in the first session I think it was like 10 cars in a couple of tenths.
“In FP2 it was slightly more spread out, I was on course for a really good lap at the end but just had a small problem in the last two corners.”
Asked what could have been possible with a cleaner run, Russell replied: “On my very last lap I was, I think, two or three tenths up, I came out of Turn 12 and I damaged my front wing, and I went off the track on the last two corners. I didn’t go off, but I lost lots of lap time there. So, I think we would have been like P3 in that session.
“But we always have quite strong FP1 and FP2 showings.
“But it’s very difficult with this C5 tyre. This tyre has so much potential, but it’s difficult to really get that sweet spot. It’s all to play for, I think.”
Pirelli has elected to bring its Softest selection of compounds this weekend in an attempt to discourage teams from running a singular-stop strategy in Sunday’s race.
“It was tricky, it was definitively tricky out there for all the cars,” Russell said regarding the race runs.
“A lot of graining up and down the pit lane, so I think it’s usual a qualifying race here in Melbourne, but now Pirelli has been pretty punchy, I think things are slightly different.
“It was the same last week, probably a bit too conservative, needed to go softer, so that’s what we have this week.”
He added: “I think this year, with the softer tyres, it’s going to be difficult in the race. It was an easy one stop in previous years, seemingly, so far, it’s not going to be that way.”
