Having finished on the podium last week in Singapore, Lewis Hamilton was hoping to be able to carry the momentum into this weekend's Japanese Grand Prix. But it didn't start off all that well for him in Friday's practice sessions.
Hamilton was only 16th quickest in FP1 which saw Mercedes eschew the use of soft tyres. But he barely improved when he tried the compound in FP2, which saw him finish the day 14th and a worrying 1.141s slower than Max Verstappen.
"It was a very challenging day for us out there," he admitted in comments made after the early finish to second practice following Pierre Gasly's crash. "I had a lack of confidence in the car and that contributed to our struggles.
"It was difficult to find the right balance, and we didn't manage to get on top of it by the end of FP2. The tyres were overheating and that left us quite far off the top of the timing sheets."
Despite the disappointing day, Hamilton was feeling confident that the team had a way forward that they would be working on developing overnight before final practice and qualifying in Saturday.
"We know we've got a lot of work to do tonight to pick up the performance," he acknowledged. "I do believe we can make improvements though.
"We have had similar Friday's this season and come back stronger on Saturday," he pointed out. "We will see tomorrow if we have done so again.
"We will be putting in the effort this evening to give us every chance of getting ourselves higher up the order.
There's some reason for optimism for the team in the improvement made by George Russell between the two sessions. He ended the day in fifth place, having narrows the gap to Verstappen to a little over six tenths.
"It's been a slightly strange Friday for us," he admitted. "The track seemed to have very low grip, particularly in FP1, so the car is sliding around quite a lot.
"That doesn't give you the best feeling in the world as a driver, particularly when you've got plenty of high-speed corners to tackle," he said, adding that "tyre degradation looks very high" making Sunday an interesting prospect.
"We've certainly been on the back foot today," acknowledged Mercedes' trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. "Both FP1 and FP2 proved tricky sessions for us.
"Both drivers reported struggling with an overall lack of grip and the balance of the car. We made some changes ahead of the second session and gained some useful learnings from that. However we know we must make improvements overnight.
"We are clearly not strong enough in the faster corners, with the first sector proving a particular weakness for us," he explained. That's where the majority of our work will be focused this evening.
"George did find some improvement on the single lap in FP2, but we are facing the same challenges on both our qualifying pace and the long run.
"In a sense that is encouraging. If we can fix one, the other should improve too. However we're not underestimating the work we've got to do to be stronger over the rest of the weekend."
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