Hamilton “felt really positive” in the opening practice, but suffered brake issues in the second session
Having displayed encouraging performance in the opening session at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton said that while he felt “really positive” in FP1, brake issues affected his second one-hour session at Imola.
The opening practice saw Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc end up fifth and twelfth quickest, with both of them having set their best laps on Pirelli’s brand-new C6 compound.
The Ferrari duo then started themsecond practice on the medium tyres, setting times of 1m16.296s and 1m16.263s respectively. Midway through the session, the Monegasque went out on soft tyres and posted a 1m15.768s on his second flying lap, followed shortly after by his British team-mate, who stopped the clocks in 1m15.943s.
In the final third of the session, both cars were fitted with the medium set they used at the start of the hour to run with a heavy fuel load.
Reflecting on his opening day at Imola, Hamilton said: "I was really happy with the car in FP1, it felt like we'd made a step forward and was feeling really positive.
"FP1 felt positive — the balance was good and there wasn’t much we needed to change heading into FP2, but the second session was more challenging and it was hard to find consistency.
“We’ll look into the data we’ve collected this evening, but we completed the programme and the long runs, so there’s solid amount of information to analyse."
As for his brake issues, Hamilton said that Ferrari will need to find a long-term solution as it has hindered his performance since the start of the season.
"I literally changed two of the tiniest things that shouldn't have had barely any effect at all, the smallest change we've probably done this year and we had some brake issues that then made a massive difference so that was then a fight with that. That's been quite a big issue all year actually."
“It's a lottery, we'll roll the dice and you put one [pad] on and it works and put another on and it doesn't. I hope tomorrow we figure something out, we're working on it for sure."
