Lewis Hamilton has enjoyed a strong run in recent races with three podiums in the last four races, including a famous home victory at Silverstone. But he's not happy with things in Spa right now.
Hamilton was fifth fastest in FP1 but didn't complete a clean run in second practice and was only tenth, over a second behing McLaren pace setters Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
It was back to earth with a bump for the seven time world champion who had been hoping that such inconsistent up and down performances were finally behind Mercedes.
“It was a pretty bad day, I don’t know what to say," he told the media in the paddock at Spa-Francorchamps on Friday. "Obviously it’s been feeling great in the past couple of races, but it just felt completely different today.
"The first session was not great," he continued. “We worked on it and in the second session we made some changes.
"It started off great, but then when I got to the soft tyre and I just couldn’t improve. And there’s a bunch of balance issues we have through that.
“It was better in the session, but everyone else went even better. To be 1.2s behind [McLaren] is not great.”
With rain forecast for Saturday, Hamilton is hoping that the weather may come to the team's rescue this weekend.
"If it rains then, that opens it up a little bit and hopefully we can do a better job," he suggested. "I think the car should be better in the wet than it is in the dry.
"If it’s dry then we’re not going to – at the moment – be in the greatest of places, but overnight we can make some changes for sure," he said.
"We've struggled with the car today so we will be working hard overnight as to how to improve for tomorrow," agreed Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. "So have plenty of work to do.
"We're losing time across the full speed range, rather than in specific corners, and the long run isn't where we need it to be either. Both of those are linked by a lack of balance and grip.
"We have our team in the simulator back at Brackley already looking at setup options and aiming to make solid progress. There is a good chance we will see some wet running tomorrow, that may make it difficult to ev
Hamilton's team mate George Russell also felt that they had a lot of work ahead of them if Mercedes are going to match their recent level of performance and challenge McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari.
“I think McLaren are definitely a step ahead of us at the moment and Red Bull, so just need to keep on assessing and go from there," he said.
“[I need to] look at the long run pace at high fuel," he noted. "Then I think the McLarens were at max power which gives you a couple of tenths around this track, so tomorrow’s definitely a different day.
"I’m sure we can find a bit more tonight, but we’ve often had very good Fridays and the others have caught up on Saturdays. Hopefully that will be us this weekend."
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