Hamilton says Mercedes' true pace 'a kick in the gut'

Any hopes that Lewis Hamilton might have had about the Mercedes being competitive this weekend at Miami International Autodrome were quickly dashed in second practice for the Miami Grand Prix.

First practice had offered the team a glimmer of hope when George Russell finished the session quickest, with Hamilton making it a Mercedes 1-2 on the FP1 timesheets.

But that all changed in the second one-hour practice which saw Max Verstappen take a commanding lead, his time of 1:27.930s proving to be almost a second faster than Hamilton who was only P7.

• Read also: Verstappen tops Miami second practice as Leclerc crashes

“It’s a great weekend, it’s a great place to be," Hamilton told the media when asked for his thoughts about Friday. "There’s lots of positives, it’s just we’re not particularly quick and it’s a struggle out there.

“We’re trying lots of different things," he insisted. "FP1 looked quite good and then in FP2, the true pace came out and it’s just a kick in the gut.

"I think it's maybe the heat or maybe just the balance that we have at the moment," he suggested. “The same as every weekend, that we’re a second down.

"It’s a little bit tough to take sometimes. But it’s okay, we’ll just keep on working on it," he added. "We’ll regroup tonight and see if we can make some setup changes and get the car in a sweeter spot.

"I'm gonna stay optimistic, and I'm gonna stay hopeful that we can get the car in a better place tomorrow and maybe a couple of steps up."

However there's a limit to what the team can do trackside overnight, and Hamilton is keenly aware that his hopes of being competitive this season lie in the programme of updates coming from Brackley.

“There isn’t just one thing,” he said. “I’m trying to stay positive with it. We’re working as hard as we can. It’s just we desperately need those upgrades, that’s for sure.

"It feels like - apart from last year, we had the bouncing - it generally feels like we're racing pretty much the same car, and that's the difficult thing," he explained.

Hamilton said the new parts should be ready in time for Imola. “{We've] just got to keep our head down for one more race and hopefully we’ll start a new path at the next race.”

Russell was also feeling the frustration of the opening day in Friday, after finishing FP2 down in P15 after a series of technical problems compounded by hitting traffic on his key flying laps.

“Still trying to understand, still trying to grasp how to find a lot more performance to at least get us best of the rest," he said. "When we have sessions when we’re not in that position, of course it’s frustrating.

“Week after week we know the journey we’re on at the moment," he continued. “This is a team of winners: everyone here wants to win, and anything less is of course frustrating

“There’s only one person happy on a Saturday," he pointed out. "And one person happy on a Sunday. And that’s the one who finishes first.”

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