Hamilton on disappointing FP2: “I’m giving it everything out there"

Friday 9 September 2022

F1 | Italian GP | Hamilton on disappointing FP2: “I’m giving it everything out there"

After looking good for their first race win last weekend, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell suffer more issues to set them back in both Free Practice sessions today.

Both the Mercedes cars were showing how competitive they’re becoming in FP1 earlier today, with George Russell in P3 and Lewis Hamilton in fourth, ahead of Championship leader, Max Verstappen.

But Practice 2 saw Russell finished in fifth behind the McLaren of Lando Norris, and Hamilton was seventh fastest behind Sergio Pérez - almost a second off the pace from Ferrari's Carlos Sainz in P1.

There looked to be bouncing issues on Russell’s car, and the ERS deployment was discussed over team radio with the man from King’s Lynn. Speaking with selected media, Russell reflected on the issues:

“I think we’re going to have to deal with it to be honest, it’s a bit of a strange day.

“FP was looking pretty strong but then Ferrari and Red Bull have seemingly taken a step forward compared to us; But maybe we’ve taken a step back as we were obviously behind a McLaren in FP2, so a bit of work to be done tonight to understand that.”

Russell continued, “Both [bouncing and deployment] were a blip during the session which made things worse. But generally speaking we’re lacking a bit of deployment which… I think we’re similar to Red Bull but Ferrari seem to have it a bit more in hand in terms of deployment, so that may make things tricky in a race scenario as they’ve got a bit more of a locker to play with. 

“But it’s going to be something we have to deal with.”

When asked about the ERS deployment, Hamilton said, “I didn’t have an issue with deployment. I mean we have low deployment. But no, I didn’t have any issues.

“We just made some setup changes, nothing major but we went a lot slower, somehow. Or they [Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren] went a lot quicker, so… I’m giving it everything out there, it just doesn’t feel particularly quick.”

Monza is well known for being able to get a tow, and if done correctly can help bump a driver up the order in Qualifying. It has benefitted some teams previously, but other teams don’t always go for the option because if they get it wrong, it can hinder:

“I mean, if you nail it it definitely does work but there’s high risk, high reward, so it’s not something that we’re putting a lot of emphasis into.

“You know, qualifying sessions are a time where we learn quite a lot about the car or the tyres, and that’s clearly been somewhere we’ve struggled the year, so for now, I think we’ll both just go in and do an ordinary session.”

Hamilton was candid when asked about the tow: 

“Well it’s George’s turn to choose this weekend, whether he goes first or second - so most likely he’ll choose to go behind me.

“So, I’ll just do my normal programme and he’ll get a tow.”

After being off the pace during the Belgian Grand Prix, but notably more competitive last weekend in Zandvoort, Mercedes and their two drivers will be hoping they can fine-tune the silver arrow cars, to achieve the team’s first race victory of 2022.