As Lewis Hamilton claims to be surprised at his car's pace, world champion Max Verstappen suggests that all is not what it would appear to be.

"It's a shock to see us where we are but we'll take it for now," said Hamilton after FP2 having led a Mercedes 1-2. "But we can't get ahead of ourselves," he admitted, "we need to keep our heads down, keep working on the set-up and trying to extract more.

"I think our long run pace is nowhere near the Red Bulls, for example, so we've got some work to do on that," he added.

"We need to sit down and understand where this increase in performance has come from," said teammate George Russell, "whether it's a one-off, whether we can sustain this and what we need to do to fight for a serious position on Sunday.

"After testing Max looked a long way out in front," he continued, "now that gap has reduced, but he's still out in front. I think he's still got a healthy margin to the others, rather than just a ridiculous margin to the others.

"So, by no means does this mean we're back, or we can fight with them just yet," he warned.

"Mercedes looks strong which is a bit of a surprise," said Charles Leclerc, "but we don't know what fuel load they were running so we will have that answered tomorrow.

"I expect to be there with the others, the only question mark is obviously Red Bull and how far they are in front," he added. "But with the others, I'd be surprised if we aren't in the mix."

"It just shows you can never look into testing because people tend to not show all their cards," said Carlos Sainz. "It's clear that Mercedes will be in the fight and Red Bull were a lot stronger in the long run than the short run so I'm expecting them to be also stronger tomorrow and Sunday."

Sixth on the timesheets, Verstappen said: "Maybe some people around us already turned up the engine a bit in terms of top speed. We just focus on ourselves and I think from today there were a few little balance issues from front to rear. Nothing big, it's just about trying to find that sweet spot, especially around here with the rough tarmac. That's what we'll try to focus on a little bit more for tomorrow.

"At the end of the day you also just want to focus a bit on the long run because that's where the car really needs to work," added the Dutchman. "Of course, qualifying is important, but we need to make sure that the car is in good shape for the race.

"I'm not too worried about the gap to P1," he said of the practice timesheets, "but it's gonna be very close, in qualifying. The long run I was a bit happy about that, but again, also there are a few little things that we can do better."

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