'Disastrous' brake changes hurt Hamilton on Friday

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Lewis Hamilton has attributed the gap to Nico Rosberg in FP2 at the United States Grand Prix to "disastrous" brake settings changes.

Having been fastest in the opening practice session, Hamilton dropped 0.3s behind team-mate Rosberg on Friday afternoon and was also beaten by Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull. Explaining the gap, Hamilton pointed to problems with the brakes which he is confident will be rectified by final practice.

REPORT: Rosberg leads Ricciardo and Hamilton in FP2

"I had some problems in P2 with the braking, so that was losing me a lot of time," Hamilton said. "FP1 was looking pretty good and I made some changes for FP2 which were good, but I had some underlying issues with the braking system so hopefully that’s fixed.

"I wasn’t comfortable in the second session. We made some changes that generally made the car better, but we made some brake setting changes that were disastrous and I was struggling to finish a lap without oversteer, but we will fix that."

Asked about Red Bull's pace following a strong long run from Ricciardo, Hamilton believes Mercedes does not have much of an advantage in Austin.

"I think they are going to be very quick this weekend, it looks like they will be very quick, so it’s definitely going to be a challenge. I guess more of our pace will show up [in qualifying] and we will get a better understanding, but they are definitely not far behind."

However, Hamilton is confident Mercedes will be able to benefit from better tyre management on Sunday based on his Friday running.

"For me the super-soft was really good. It was lasting relatively well and wasn’t as bad for us as it was potentially for some others. It is the faster tyre so people will start on it and then we’ll see how long people can last on it on the first stint."

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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.