Hamilton on the “back foot” after oil system issue curtails Dutch GP F1 practice

Hamilton’s Mercedes ground to a halt after just three laps in FP2.

Mercedes has since confirmed that it saw unusual behaviour in the oil system in Hamilton’s power unit.

The good news for Hamilton fans is that he was running an older engine - PU1 - so it shouldn’t affect his allocation for the remainder of the season.

Speaking after the session, he said: “I just lost power and they just told me to stop. It’s not the end of the world. It’s been a beautiful day in terms of weather. It’s amazing to see the crowd - so many people here, good to see people hyped and the first time we’ve seen the full, full energy, well not the full yet, we will probably see it over the next few days but all the energy that the Dutch fans bring.

“This morning we only got like 20 minutes of running obviously with that red flag. Naturally, it puts us on the back foot but Valtteri looked like he had a good session so hopefully tomorrow we can try and fill in and make up for some of the time hopefully.”

Hamilton remains confident he can be in the mix come qualifying after finding a good balance in first practice, having topped the timesheets.

“Yes definitely, definitely. It wasn’t feeling too bad. Then I made some changes for this season but I got one lap with it,” Hamilton added.

“Very, very hard to pick the good or bad points from that change but as I said we got Valtteri who did a lot of running, lots of data analysis we have from all the long runs, most of the other people go their long runs so it’s going good.”

On the track itself, Hamilton described Zandvoort as “epic”, having not driven the Dutch circuit since 2005.

“Oh man, that track is epic,” he explained “It’s really fantastic. It brought so many memories when I first got out there when I was driving here because I knew it was great when I was in Formula 3 but it’s crazy in a Formula One car.

“The speed we’re going through Turn 7 it’s [makes excited noise] it’s a real racing circuit. I don’t think you’ll be able to overtake here because it’s just high, high downforce, super-fast corners which you probably won’t be able to follow through but let’s hope that there’s good strategy for Sunday.”