Hamilton balks after practice sessions: 'Missed confidence in car'

Places 16 and 14 were not what Hamilton had hoped for beforehand. "I had a lack of confidence in the car and that contributed to our struggles. It was difficult to find the right balance and we didn't manage to get on top of it by the end of FP2. The tyres were overheating and that left us quite far off the top of the timing sheets," Hamilton said.

The Briton was well aware that there is work to be done in the evening. "I do believe we can make improvements though. We have had similar Friday's this season and come back stronger on Saturday. We will see tomorrow if we have done so again. We will be putting in the effort this evening to give us every chance of getting ourselves higher up the order."

Russell has 'strange' Friday

Teammate George Russell did find himself reasonably up front after the second free practice session. The Briton was fifth, having clocked up the 13th time in the morning: "It's been a slightly strange Friday for us. The track seemed to have very low grip, particularly in FP1, so the car is sliding around quite a lot. That doesn't give you the best feeling in the world as a driver. Particularly when you've got plenty of high-speed corners to tackle. The race on Sunday will also be interesting as tyre degradation looks very high."

Russell had also seen Max Verstappen dominate - unlike last weekend in Singapore. "In terms of the relative order, the Red Bull looks to have returned to its normal pace at the front. They have been exceptionally quick today. I think we are likely half-a-step behind the Ferraris and the McLaren of Lando Norris at present. We've got a bit of work to do tonight to close that gap. We are typically strong at finding those performance gains so we can be optimistic of improving for tomorrow."

Mercedes has problems in fast corners

These are words echoed by Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' Trackside Engineering Director. "We've certainly been on the back foot today. Both FP1 and FP2 proved tricky sessions for us. Both drivers reported struggling with an overall lack of grip and the balance of the car. We made some changes ahead of the second session and gained some useful learnings from that. However, we know we must make improvements overnight."

Shovlin says the biggest flaw lies in the faster corners, especially in the first sector. "That's where the majority of our work will be focused this evening," he said. George did find some improvement on the single lap in FP2, but we are facing the same challenges on both our qualifying pace and the long run. In a sense that is encouraging. If we can fix one, the other should improve too. However, we are not underestimating the work we've got to do to be stronger over the rest of the weekend," Shovlin said.