Mercedes was again the dominant team at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona during the free practice sessions on Friday. Lewis Hamilton and teammate Valtteri Bottas managed to easily keep their competitors behind in both sessions and the gap to number three Max Verstappen was significant again. Still, Hamilton is not reassured because of an important factor that proved to be disastrous for Mercedes tires in recent races: the heat.
Barcelona is normally already on the calendar of the F1 season in May. That is of course slightly different this year due to the corona crisis. This means that the southern European country is now being driven in the middle of August and as we all know the temperatures in Spain can rise considerably and that means that Hamilton does not feel completely comfortable this weekend.
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“It’s certainly pretty tough out there,” said the six-time world champion planetf1.com. “I don’t think I have been to Spain when it was as hot as now, the weather is very nice, but in the car it is really killer and of course it is also very hard on the tires. It has been a good day, especially the second session was good for me and on the longer runs we were a lot closer to Red Bull so I think it will be an exciting race. ”
The blisters on the tires were a big problem for Mercedes at Silverstone and Hamilton is therefore worried that this will also be a problem in Spain. “Our tires are not happy in these conditions,” Hamilton continues. “You slide all over with overheated tires, I didn’t see any blisters today but that was also the case on Friday last week. At least we did well on the longer runs, I don’t know how much longer we can go on compared to Red Bull, but that will determine whether it will be a one or two stopper this weekend, ” said Hamilton.
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