Lewis Hamilton insists rain can be a ‘helping hand’ for Mercedes this weekend

Lewis Hamilton believes the wet weather forecast for the Spanish GP weekend could help him and Mercedes since they lacked overall pace in the practice sessions. The Briton also hailed the changes to the Spanish circuit and preferred it to the previous layout.

With their car lacking pace despite their upgrades, Hamilton finished 12th in the first practice and 11th in the second practice session. Struggling to make it to the top 10, the Briton hopes for changes and improvisations to be made overnight to the car to perform better on Saturday (June 3) and Sunday.

He is also hoping for wet weather to mix up the grid and felt some rain could be a relief. Speaking to media after the practice sessions on Friday, Lewis Hamilton said:

“Wet weather could always be a helping hand, given that we’re not as quick as we’d like to be. I’m just going to try and do the best job again tonight, to make the right setup changes and there are definitely improvements I know I can make with this setup so I’ll get on top of that.”

Commenting on the circuit changes, the Briton said:

“It’s awesome. It’s very fast. I definitely prefer it to the small chicane we had in the past. It’s much more fun. I’ve not followed anyone through there so I don’t know how that’s going to be in the race, but it’s definitely gonna make it tough for [tyre] deg.”

Hamilton preferred the current layout changes to the track rather than the small chicane in the final sector of the circuit. However, he expects more tyre degradation through the final corners of the Catalan track.

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Lewis Hamilton rues tough Friday and believes their rivals have upgraded themselves

After struggling to get into the top 10, Lewis Hamilton believes Mercedes had an unexpectedly difficult Friday (June 2). The Briton believes their car felt different compared to Monaco and that they had to try optimise their tyres and curb their degradation.

Outlining their expectations for the qualifying, he felt Mercedes are somewhere in the midfield between fifth to 10th in what is a tight field. Summarising his Friday practice sessions, Hamilton said:

“Yeah it’s ok. We’re fighting as hard as we can. I would say it was a difficult day one, you know P1 and P2, just getting on top of the tyres and the deg.

“The car feels like a car. I mean, it’s so different from last week. But we’re just focusing. 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 from a single lap.”

On his expectations from qualifying and the race, Lewis Hamilton said:

“I think, from the pace that I had today, it’s a struggle for me currently to get into the top 10. But hopefully, we’ll do some changes overnight. I think it’s very, very close between us and that middle, after P5 back to around P10. So it’s really, really close between us all.

“It’s impressive to see the improvements that everyone seems to have made all around us, looking at [Esteban] Ocon, the Alpines are doing great. The Aston Martin was second just right behind the Red Bull, which is really really impressive. So yeah, it’s not gonna be easy, that’s for sure.”

The Mercedes team upgraded its front suspension, while also putting in a revised floor and new side-pod design on the W14 in Monaco. In Spain, they have added further updates such as a revised diffuser and a revised side-pod inlet.

However, Lewis Hamilton expects the team to make changes between Friday and Saturday to optimise their package better. As it stands, the Silver Arrows are third in the championship, only a point behind Aston Martin.