Lewis Hamilton has his fingers crossed that Mercedes will get lucky – or it will be “pretty impossible” to do well in Austin this weekend.
Mercedes are one of a few teams bringing their last big upgrades of the season with them to Texas. But because the Sprint format is in use, they had just a single hour of practice on Friday to calibrate their new parts and set up their cars before jumping straight into qualifying for the short-form race.
And Hamilton, 39, highly doubts his team will get the most out of his updated car at the United States Grand Prix. He said: “It is pretty impossible unless you are just lucky and [the upgrade] works from the get-go.
“Last year we came here and I did not have to change much and the balance was sweet from the get-go. Nine and a half times out of 10, that is not the case. It is difficult but everyone is in the same boat. That puts a lot of pressure and a lot of focus on simulation.
“Simulations have not been ideal in the past year or so but we are constantly working on them. Some others put their car on the track and it just works straight away. We are hoping that we have definitely made more than enough mistakes and hopefully we will be able to start on a better platform.”
Hamilton also bemoaned that Mercedes have been “out of sequence” with their rivals in terms of the timings of their upgrades throughout the season. Team-mate George Russell, 26, is more optimistic about how things could go in Austin, though.
Mercedes’ last big upgrade package at the Belgian Grand Prix in July did not have the desired effect but Russell thinks they have now learned their lesson. He acknowledges, though, that other teams will still likely have a performance advantage over the Silver Arrows at the Circuit of the Americas.
Russell said: “We reverted with the upgrades that we brought to Spa. Effectively, we are making two steps now when we bring this upgrade. We are hoping it is going to have quite an impact.
“I hope with the upgrade we can be in the fight again, at least in qualifying, fighting for those top four places and then in the race fighting for a podium. Realistically, we know McLaren and Red Bull are a good step ahead of everyone right now.”
Lando Norris won the most recent race in Singapore last month and is confident of another strong showing in Texas this weekend. “With how we performed here last year and how we have performed over the last three, four, five races, I think we are confident everywhere that we should be towards the top,” said the McLaren racer.
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