Hamilton: Car ‘feeling much better’ at Suzuka

Editor

Lewis Hamilton has revealed that he is much happier with his Mercedes car so far this race weekend after balance and pace issues tarnished his Malaysia running.

Hamilton was second behind Sebastian Vettel in FP1 and was one of only five drivers to set timed laps when the heavens opened for FP2.

But, despite the limited running, Hamilton is in an optimistic mood.

"It's been an interesting day, the car is feeling much better than it was in Malaysia," said Hamilton.

"I'm glad that we had the dry session for FP1.

"In FP2, there was a lot of rain, but it felt really important to go out and assess the track and see how the car was feeling as the car was not good in the wet in Malaysia.

"The car feels back to normal, so I'm ready to race."

Bottas is also feeling comfortable, but he admitted that he needs to extract more performance on the quicker tyre available this weekend.

"In practice one, the car did feel better than it did in Malaysia, but we still need to work on things to make the car quicker," said Bottas, who did not run at all in FP2.

"As a starting point for the weekend, it definitely feels better than a week ago.

"My run with the Soft tyres was good, but with the Super Soft, I didn't really gain any grip, so the main thing for me is to understand the Super Soft performance.

"The long runs actually weren't too bad, and hopefully we'll see better weather tomorrow."