Hamilton concerned about outright speed in Qatar

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Lewis Hamilton admitted that he was worried by an apparent lack of pace in Friday's practice sessions for the Qatar Grand Prix at the Losail International Circuit.

Hamilton complained about a lack of power on his initial run in first session and ended the session early with damage to his front wing. He was still struggling to find the improvements he was seeking in the evening.

He finished FP2 in fourth place, 0.422 behind his Mercedes team mate Valtteri Bottas who topped the timesheets and three quarters of a tenth of a session behind his main Red Bull title rival Max Verstappen.

Read also: Bottas quickest from Gasly in Qatar twilight session

"I don't even know how big the gap is, but I'm off so I'm definitely not close," he told the media after the end of the session.

"No clue. At the moment I'm a little bit slow so I need to figure that out," he continued, while insisting that he was happy with the new venue from a driving perspective.

"Driving-wise it's okay," he said. "It's all high-speed corners so it's definitely physical but then the track is quite nice.

"No real issues," he added. "There's a little bit of damage just from riding kerbs, but nothing too serious hopefully."

The day's track activity was somewhat overshadowed by the long awaited decision by the stewards on whether to grant Mercedes right of appeal against a decision not to penalise Verstappen for sweeping Hamilton off-track last week in Brazil.

While the team principals bickered in their press conference, Hamilton himself was determined not to get sucked into the rancour and debate.

"I don't have any thoughts on it," he insisted. "I was not a part of it, and I have been focusing on trying to do my weekend."

Hamilton went on to win the Sao Paulo to close the gap to Verstappen to just 14 points with three races remaining, including this weekend's Grand Prix in Qatar.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.