Lewis and Valtteri After Friday’ FPs | 2018 Belgian Grand Prix of F1

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport had a good Free Practice on Friday. Lewis record P3 after the first practice session and Valtteri finished on P5 in the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix of F1.

Lewis Hamilton set P3 with time 1:44.676 during the FP1 in the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix of Formula 1.

Lewis Hamilton drove 22 Laps during the FP1 of the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix of Formula 1. He used Medium and Soft tires. His best time is 1:44.676. Valtteri Bottas made 25 laps in the FP1 using Medium and SuperSoft tires. His best time is 1:44.724.

The FP2 of the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix of Formula One was better for both Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton finished on P2 and Bottas on P3. Lewis started with Medium tires and later change to SuperSoft. He drove 28 Laps and his best time is 1:43.523. Bottas drove 29 Laps starting on Soft and later change to SuperSoft tires. His best time is 1:43.804.

Valtteri Bottas set best time 1:44.724 which is P5 during the FP1 in the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix of Formula 1.

Quotes

Lewis Hamilton:

It’s good to be back. The break is never really long enough, but there is a point when you start to miss driving, so I’m happy to be back in the car again. These are the fastest F1 cars we’ve ever had, and you really feel it at this track. You go almost flat through Pouhon – it’s crazy. We’ve brought a new engine today and everything was running smoothly. It’s really close between us and Ferrari; it seems like we’ve both been bringing new updates at a similar rate. For the middle sector, you want to have a good amount of downforce, but you want less in the other sectors to gain speed down the straights. The challenge is to find the right balance and thankfully I have a great team working on that. Coming into the weekend I heard that it was going to be raining all weekend. There were some spits of rain on certain parts of the track in FP1, but in FP2 it was nice and dry. I hope it stays that way as this track is just awesome to drive in the dry.

Hamilton finished on P2 with time 1:43.523 during FP2 in the 2018 2018 Belgian Grand Prix of Formula 1.

Valtteri Bottas:

In general, the car felt pretty good today. The balance was slightly off in the beginning of the day, but we managed to correct that so that the car felt nice pretty much everywhere on the track. The lower speed sections were a little more challenging for us, as we struggled a bit with traction coming out of the corners. Ferrari looked a little bit quicker in some corner combinations like Turn 5 to Turn 7, but I don’t think we’re far off. However, it’s always difficult to make any detailed predictions on Friday for the weekend as it is usually really close in Qualifying. In terms of set-up it is usually a compromise between Qualifying and the race; but given my grid penalty this weekend, the focus for me will obviously be the race. Fortunately, the long-run pace felt good and I am confident that it is possible to come up through the field here in Spa. The new engine also felt good today, so I’m looking forward to the race – it should be fun.

 Bottas finished on P3 after the FP2 with best time 1:43.804 in the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix of Formula 1.

James Allison:

It was a curate’s egg of a day. The good part of it was that we ran through the programme we planned without any mechanical dramas to the car and we picked up the information we need to have from the tyres. The other good parts of it were that both drivers at various points of both session looked quick and that the new engines ran reliably and showed a promising performance. The area where we need to do more work is that the long runs were poor and scrappy affairs with both drivers. A mixture of traffic and flat-spotting meant that we didn’t establish the rhythm that gives you a warm feeling going into Sunday. So it was not a bad day, but it could have been better and we will do our traditional job of tucking-in overnight to see what we can improve to make sure that the cars have got a good combination of single lap pace and long-run speed.