26/10/2018
NEWS STORY
Lewis finished the morning session in P5, with Valtteri just behind in P6. In FP2, Lewis came home in P7 with Valtteri in P9.
Lewis Hamilton: The car was good in some places, but not so good in others. It's not about one particular area; there are lots of different things that we can improve. It was difficult with the high track temperatures, which were melting and graining the tyres, but a lot of people were experiencing that today. We run the biggest wings at this track but are still quite quick on the straights because of the altitude, but then there's not a lot of grip through the corners, even on the HyperSoft tyres. We've got some ground to catch up on, so we're now going to go through everything in the debrief and look at all the details to find some answers. Red Bull seem out of our reach at the moment, Ferrari are right there with us, but we're here to try and compete, so we will do the best we can to have a real race.
Valtteri Bottas: It was a pretty difficult day. We struggled with the pace in both sessions and like nearly everyone else we also struggled with tyre life. Both of the compounds started to grain quickly and it feels like we're lacking overall grip, so the car is sliding around a lot which is then wearing the tyres. We don't have a definite answer why the pace isn't quite there yet; we're going to have to analyse it and look at it from every angle. We have plenty of work to do for tomorrow and, while we are scratching our heads a little at this point, I'm confident that we'll find answers over the course of the evening and come back stronger tomorrow.
James Allison: This is an unusual track, which places unusual demands on the chassis, power unit, cooling systems and tyres. From all our running today, we have to conclude that we have not yet found the best way to meet those unusual demands with good performance on both single laps and in the long runs. We were overheating the power unit in a number of areas today, and that meant we had to protect against this by turning it down as a precaution. With a bit luck, and no little hard work, we can get ourselves into better shape tomorrow and on Sunday, when conditions are also forecast to be cooler. We have plenty of work ahead of us overnight and in FP3 tomorrow to put ourselves in a stronger position than we were able to achieve today.
Check out our Friday gallery from Mexico City, here.