F1 News: Lewis Hamilton Hits Rock Bottom - "It's A Struggle For Me"
The Mercedes team ended up with a rather disappointing finish in the second free practice of the Spanish Grand Prix, with George Russell finishing the session in P8 and Lewis Hamilton in P11. The latter, not feeling at his best, admitted that the Brackley squad still had plenty of work on their hands. Now, Hamilton has admitted that he's reached rock bottom as he struggles with the W14.
This season has presented a continuous struggle for Mercedes. Although their W14 car performs well with a full tank of fuel, the team lags significantly behind the competition during qualifying runs. In Spain, the situation remains the same.
"Yeah it's okay, I mean we're fighting as hard as we can," Hamilton shared, masking the concern in his voice. "I would say it was a difficult day one of FP1 and FP2. I think just getting on top of the tyres and the deck.
"Yeah, the car feels like the car. I mean it's so different from last week of course.
"But we're just focusing, I think in the long run pace didn't look terrible. And we just got to work on trying to figure out how we can extract more on the single lap."
Hamilton seems to appreciate that the final chicane has been removed, expressing:
"It's awesome. It's very fast. I definitely prefer it to the small chicane that we had in the past. It's much more fun." He added while speaking to the press. "I've not followed anyone through there.
"So I don't know how that's going to be in the race but definitely going to make it tough on degradation."
He wasn't so optimistic about his qualifying pace, however, with him expecting to find it difficult to get into Q3.
"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," he explained.
"You saw the Aston Martin in second just right behind the Red Bull, which is really,
This situation sets the stage for an intense qualifying round, pushing Mercedes to up their game.