Mercedes sees challenge for Hamilton: 'Difficult to overtake on the track'

Mercedes are looking like the strongest team after Friday's free practice sessions. Lewis Hamilton was the fastest man on track in both FP1 and FP2 . Andrew Shovlin talks about the high grip on the track. The team will be hoping to maintain their lead in both championships this weekend.

"We've had a solid day; both cars are showing good pace on single lap and long run. We had to move the setup quite a bit over the course of the day as the track had more grip than we were expecting but it looks like we have ended up in about the right place", Shovlin says in Mercedes' official press release.

"We need to go through the data to understand where the three tyre compounds are in terms of pace and degradation; we'd expected them to suffer a bit more given the high energy corners here but they seem to be holding up surprisingly well. It feels like other teams may have come in with the same preconceptions, as we saw a lot of soft tyres being used over the course of the day."

'Valtteri has the edge on Max'

Indeed, grip was very low last year, which caused the drivers a lot of problems. Especially with the rain, it was very slippery on the track. This year, the tarmac seems to have improved, which Mercedes is happy about. Hamilton has picked up a grid penalty this weekend, so Mercedes are especially hoping for a good result from Valtteri Bottas.

"The indications from free practice are that it's going to be quite a challenge for Lewis to overtake on track but we're looking at all the options available to us in strategy and on car setup to allow us to fight back on Sunday. Valtteri has had a good start to the weekend and looked to have the edge on Max today.
We'll be working hard to try and keep that edge as it's obviously a big boost to both championships if we can get Valtteri in front on Saturday and Sunday."