BARCELONA, CMC – Lewis Hamilton said he fears struggling to get into the top 10 during qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix after a difficult first day of practice yesterday.
The British race car driver with Grenadian heritage finished 11th during the practice session with the package of updates on Mercedes that debuted in the previous GP in Monaco last weekend, getting its first proper test.
“It’s okay, we’re fighting as hard as we can,” Hamilton said. “I would say it was a difficult day one, P1 and P2, just getting on top of the tyres and the deg. Our car feels like… the car.
“We’re just focusing on… I think the long-run pace didn’t look terrible, we’ve just got to work on trying to figure out how we can extract more on a single lap.”
Hamilton said the Mercedes Racing team faced a long night of work if he is to make an impression on the grid-deciding session on Saturday.
“I think from the pace that I had, it’s a struggle for me currently to get into the top 10, but hopefully we’ll do some changes overnight,” he said.
“I think it’s very, very close between us and that middle kind of… After P5 back to kind of P10. It’s really, really close between us all and it’s impressive to see all the improvements that everyone seems to have made all around us.”
He added: “If you look at [Esteban] Ocon, the Alpines are doing great. You saw the Aston Martin [of Fernando Alonso] in second, right behind the Red Bull [of Max Verstappen], which is really, really impressive. It’s not going to be easy, that’s for sure.
“I’m just going to try and do the best job I can to make the right set-up changes. There’s definitely improvements I know I can make with the set-up, so I’ll get on top of that.”
Mercedes head into the Spanish GP sitting third on 119 points in the constructors’ standings, between second-placed Aston Martin and fourth-placed Ferrari, while Hamilton and teammate George Russell hold fourth on 69 and fifth on 50 respectively, in the driver’s battle.
