Tyre guidelines 'much more sensible' - Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton says Pirelli has delivered "much more sensible" tyre guidelines to the teams at the Italian Grand Prix.

After problems with tyre failures at Spa-Francorchamps, Pirelli issued guidelines to the teams ahead of the race weekend which originally stipulated an increase of up to five psi in terms of tyre pressures. Hamilton said on Thursday he felt such an increase would be a "disaster", but after the figures were relaxed he says Pirelli made the right decision.

“I’m not really sure what the wear was like, but it was a much more sensible change once they came down with it," Hamilton said. "So out there it doesn’t seem to be so much of a problem, it’s only a psi more than before, so they’ve come down quite a bit.”

With Mercedes introducing an engine upgrade at Monza and duly setting a blistering pace on Friday, Hamilton says there was no noticeable difference from within the cockpit.

"It’s more reliability changes that they did to improve reliability because we’ve got a long way to go still this season. The engine feels fantastic, it is a fantastic engine, but it feels the same.”

With team-mate Nico Rosberg just 0.021s slower than Hamilton in FP2, the defending champion says he has plenty of room for improvement.

“I have [time to find]. I didn’t actually have particularly great first and second sectors; this morning was much better.”