Hamilton fears elimination in Q2: 'Hopefully we can make some changes'

Mercedes again did not look very good in the second free practice with an eighth-place finish for George Russell and an 11th time for Lewis Hamilton. The latter left Friday feeling mediocre and knows there are still some steps to take towards Saturday's qualifying.

It has been Mercedes' problem all season. With a full tank, the W14 is willing, but in qualifying runs the team loses a lot of time compared to the competition. In Spain, it is no different.

Speed over one lap needs to improve

"Yeah it's okay, I mean we're fighting as hard as we can," Hamilton said, sounding a little less positive afterwards. "I would say it was a difficult day one of FP1 and FP2. I think just getting on top of the tyres and the deck. Yeah the car feels like the car. I mean it's so different from last week of course. But we're just focusing, I think in the long run pace didn't look terrible. And we just got to work on trying to figure out how we can extract more on the single lap."

That the final chicane has been removed can at least meet with the seven-time world champion's approval. "It's awesome. It's very fast. I definitely prefer it to the small chicane that we had in the past. It's much more fun. I've not followed anyone through there. So I don't know how that's going to be in the race but definitely going to make it tough on degredation," he told GPblog, among others .

Hamilton sees competition improving

The qualifying runs really need to improve a lot more, otherwise Hamilton fears even elimination in Q2. "I think from the pace that I had today, it's a struggle for me currently to get into top 10. But hopefully we'll do some changes overnight. I think it's very, very close between us and that middle after P5 back to P10, so it's really, really close between us all. It's impressive to see how the improvements that everyone seems to have made all around us. If you look at Ocon, Alpine’s are doing great. You saw the Aston Martin in second just right behind the Red Bull, which is really, really impressive. So yeah, it's not going to be easy, that's for sure."