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 on Friday.
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. “It was a difficult day one, P1 and P2, just getting on top of the tires and the deg. Our car feels like a 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 was to make an impression on the grid-deciding session on Saturday.
“I think from my pace, it’s a struggle for me to get into the top 10, but hopefully, we’ll do some changes overnight,” he said.
“I think it’s very close between us and that middle kind of… After P5, it went back to kind of P10. It’s close between us all, and it’s impressive to see all the improvements everyone seems to have made 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 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 setup changes. There are improvements I know I can make with the setup, 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. At the same time, Hamilton and teammate George Russell hold fourth on 69 and fifth on 50, respectively, in the driver’s battle.
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