In Friday’s practice, Hamilton was 0.642 seconds slower than pacesetter Max Verstappen. He fears that he will not make it into the Top 10 if improvements on his car are not carried out.
The 7-time world champion drives for Mercedes and has been dealing with the car problems that the team has encountered in the past season.
To help address their issues, Mercedes is running an upgrade, which they introduced in Monaco during last week’s race. The Brit described that as ‘a difficult day’.
“The long-run pace didn’t look terrible. We just have to work out how to extract more over a single lap,” he added.
Mercedes ran the new design for their car for the first time in Monaco but they always said that Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya would be where a real judgment was to take place. Other teams who are introducing new designs are Ferrari and Aston Martin.
Rain is predicted over the weekend and it is something that Hamilton said he would gladly welcome.
“We could do with a helping hand given we are not as quick as we’d like to be,” he said.
“There are definitely improvements I know I can make with the setup, so I will try to get on top of that.”