2018 British Grand Prix – Friday

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport show promising pace on the eve of a challenging weekend

• Lewis ended the morning session in P1 with Valtteri in P2
• In the afternoon, Lewis came home in P2 followed by Valtteri in P3

Lewis Hamilton

The atmosphere has been great – the weather is fantastic and the crowd was incredible today. The track is the fastest it has ever been; we’re flat out through Copse and Turn 1 and through Turn 2 with the DRS – it’s insane how fast it is. The faster this track gets, the better it gets. It has to be the best track in the world, it feels like driving a fighter jet around the track. However, it is also the bumpiest track I’ve ever experienced; it’s like the Nordschleife! With the speeds we’re going now and the G forces we’r e pulling, I think it’s going to be the most physical race of the year. I was on the Soft and the Medium tyres today; the Soft felt better than the Medium, and they seem to last – which is impressive if you look at the forces and loads they have to take on this track. It’s going to be very, very close this weekend, the Ferraris are really fast. We’re in for a serious fight which is great for the fans and I hope that we can pull through.

Valtteri Bottas

The track is quite different compared to previous years – there’s a lot of grip from the new tarmac, but at the same time a lot of bumps. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to affect us in terms of performance, only the high-speed corners like Turn 9 or Turn 13 are a bit trickier. But it’s not a big issue since we also gained grip from the new tarmac. We got the Soft tyres working okay; we experienced some overheating issues as track temperatures hit more than 50 degrees today, and we expect similar conditions on Saturday and Sunday. The Hard tyres felt more robust; it was a bit slower, but will go longer. The Ferraris look really competitive; I expect us to find more performance for tomorrow, but it is going to be really close.

James Allison

If anyone thought this weekend was going to be a walk in the park for us, then today will have disabused them of that notion. It looks mighty close at the front between us and Ferrari – both on the long runs and the short runs. It’s going to be quite a tussle, managing the tyres on a very, very demanding track in hot conditions. From what we can see, we’ve got a decent handling car that has every chance of doing well both tomorrow and Sunday if we make all the right moves.