"I love that, this collective positive mood from everyone" - Lewis Hamilton hopes Mercedes will be more competitive at 2022 F1 Azerbaijan GP

Lewis Hamilton enjoyed the positive mood in the paddock when it came to Mercedes and the improvements it has made over the last few races. However, the Briton was cautiously optimistic about the team's performance ahead of the 2022 Azerbaijan GP, given some of the challenging characteristics of the circuit.

On being asked about the optimism surrounding the progress of the car, the seven-time world champion said:

“Where’s that feeling coming from?… I love that, this collective positive mood from everyone. I hope that’s the case! Lots of work is going on. I’m hoping that it’s not as bumpy as Monaco but we’ll find out when we get out there today. And yeah, like everyone was saying, lower downforce should be better. I hope so.”

Speaking ahead of Friday's free practice sessions, the Briton said he hoped that the street circuit would not be as bumpy as Monaco. However, he was sceptical of raising any expectations regarding Mercedes' performance on the circuit.

Explaining their expectations for the weekend in Baku, Lewis Hamilton said:

“Not particularly, but yeah, when you talk about cars strengths, it’s I don’t know which ones we can align to. We’re obviously stronger on a smoother circuit. Barcelona was a lot better for us, for example. So there’s more open circuits that aren’t as bumpy. This is a bumpier circuit so not necessarily great for the characteristics within our car, but it might be smoother than...as I said might be smooth and might be okay.”

---

Lewis Hamilton revealed there were changes made to his car in FP2, which caused problems

In FP1, Lewis Hamilton was sixth and looked more competitive than his teammate George Russell. However, in FP2, while the junior Briton was seventh fastest, Hamilton managed only the 12th fastest time of the session. The seven-time world champion explained that they had made changes to his setup and were experiencing some severe porpoising. Russell, on the other hand, urged the sport to address the bouncing of the new generation of F1 cars in the future.

Describing the drop in performance, Lewis Hamilton explained Mercedes' woes, saying:

“The hardest thing about today was the bouncing, we’re hitting serious speeds at the end of the straight and bottoming out. We’re facing the same problems as in the last race. We tried something experimental on my car in the second session, it didn’t feel great but at least we tried it and we got some useful data to go through. We’ll probably revert to the original set up tomorrow. I can’t tell you one specific area which is costing us the 1.3 or 1.6 secs difference to the front, a lot of it seems to be on the straight but we need to get our heads down tonight and find solutions.”

According to Hamilton, Mercedes collected some meaningful data but was more than a second slower than frontrunners Ferrari and Red Bull. With a tricky qualifying and race weekend ahead, the Brackley squad has its work cut out ahead of the weekend.