Hamilton baffled by ‘slow’ start in F1 practice at Qatar GP

The seven-time world world champion never appeared that quick over one lap all day as he ended up 0.786s off the pace in FP1 and lagged behind his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas in FP2. 

Hamilton finished fourth in both sessions at Losail and ended the day some 0.422s behind pacesetter Bottas in the more representative second practice which took place under the lights. 

After the conclusion of FP2, Hamilton appeared somewhat downbeat as he struggled to explain his pace deficit. 

“I don’t even know how big the gap is but I’m off, so I’m definitely not close,” Hamilton said. 

“At the moment, I’m a little bit slow, so need to figure that out tonight.” 

Hamilton suffered some minor front wing damage during FP1 after running wide at Turn 15, but the Briton said he is enjoying the challenge of getting to grips with a new circuit. 

“Driving wise its okay, it’s all high-speed corners so it’s definitely physical,” he explained. 

“But the track’s quite nice, no real issues. There’s a little bit of damage just from riding kerbs but nothing too serious obviously.” 

In contrast, Bottas enjoyed a stronger first day of running in Qatar and dominated FP2, finishing over two-tenths clear of AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly during the soft tyre qualifying simulation runs. 

The Finn was happy with his set-up direction and believes he is already close to hitting the “sweet spot” with his W12. 

“Today started nicely with the set-ups, so the balance was already pretty good in the first runs, only minor tweaks to be done for FP2 - so I would say that’s an ideal way to start a weekend on a new track,” Bottas said. 

“I think the team did a really good job on the estimation of the set-up and it’s not far off the sweet spot. 

“Obviously there’s always work to do, even driving wise, in two sessions you cannot find all the speed that is available, so for sure we’ll keep on working.”