George Russell was unable to draw any firm conclusions from his lack of running during the second practice hour of the day at Monza, leaving Lewis Hamilton with high hopes for Mercedes’ performance. Meanwhile, the crew was busy fixing Russell’s car in preparation for FP2.
After taking P7 in first practice, Hamilton set the pace in a close second session by pumping in a time of 1m 20.739s. This put him just 0.003s clear of McLaren’s Lando Norris in P2, with the leading five cars all within a tenth and a half of one another.
Reflecting on Friday’s running after jumping out of the car, a smiling Hamilton commented:
“It’s been a good day. Generally felt pretty good, it’s obviously the new tarmac that’s been a bit of a challenge and the kerbs, but the car felt good from the start.
“But going through FP1 there was a lot of graining, people were struggling with tyres – including us – and then we made some good changes over the break, and the car was feeling even better in the [second] session.
“Still some work to do on a few areas and a few things, and I think ultimately [in] the long run so we can go the distance – that’s the challenge at the moment.”
On what was a warm and sunny day at Monza, Hamilton was heard reporting that his seat felt very hot during FP2. The Briton later said of the issue:
“It was ridiculously roasting in our car and I’m not quite sure exactly [why] – I think down by the radiators there’s some leakage of hot air so, yeah, it was very hot, like sitting on the sauna with no shorts on kind of pain!”
Looking ahead to qualifying day on Saturday, Hamilton sounded an optimistic note but warned that there is still work for Mercedes to do overnight.
“[I’m] feeling good,” the seven-time world champion said. “It’s going to be really important the work we do tonight, that’s done back at the factory with the simulator and we just need to tread carefully with the set-up so we don’t put the car too far out of bed like we’ve done in the past.”
It was a tricky day for Hamilton’s team mate Russell, who sat out FP1 to hand his car over to rookie Kimi Antonelli. However, with Antonelli suffering a crash during the session, the Silver Arrows were faced with the task of repairing the W15 in time for FP2.
While Russell was delayed in hitting the track – meaning that he ran his programme slightly out of sync with the most of the pack – he gained some running during the session and set the sixth quickest time.
Asked for his thoughts on the day, Russell responded: “Obviously firstly glad to see Kimi was okay, [it was] a big crash and never nice to see. The mechanics did a great job to get the car ready for FP2, as chances are it was going to be really delayed but [we] still managed to get half an hour in.
“The car seems to be fast – Lewis did a great job, top of the timesheets. But I need to review overnight with my side, I literally got maybe three or four push laps in so not the most productive Friday I’ve ever had.”
Quizzed on whether his fast laps at the end felt okay, Russell answered:
“Yeah it felt alright, it felt okay. It is a bit of a strange one, [the track is] resurfaced this year, I think it is ramping in every single lap and there seems to be quite a lot of degradation at the moment.
“But that could potentially change come Sunday, so I think we just need to be alive to the situation and see how it evolves during the race weekend.”
In terms of whether he could be in the fight for pole position and the race win, Russell admitted that he is uncertain of where things stand.
“I really don’t know, I need to look into it,” the 26-year-old conceded.
“On my side I only got half a session in. We were on the old parts for FP2, Lewis was back on the new stuff which I think was working as expected, so for tomorrow, I’m pretty confident we’ll be proceeding with that.”
