Emilia Romagna GP: Encouraging Friday for the Team in Imola

Imola is the first European race of the season, which is why many teams have brought updates to the track, including our team. We have the second part of our update package from Miami.

After two sprint weekends, Imola is also another familiar Grand Prix weekend with three free practice sessions, meaning three hours of time to set up the cars for qualifying and the race.

However, practice time in FP1 was compromised by a red flag. FP2 then took place in the sunshine and without interruptions. After encouraging results in the morning, the team focused on long runs and further data gathering in the afternoon.

Contrary to most of the other drivers, both drivers started the session on the Hard tyres. Lewis and George were satisfied with the pace and balance of the car and could match the times of many drivers on the softer medium tyres.

In addition to long runs, the Mercedes duo also worked on their pace on one lap. As usual, the field was close together, with the first ten drivers within one second of each other.

The difficult old-school circuit in Imola does not forgive mistakes, but the team was able to repeat its strong form from FP1 and were overall content with their start of the weekend.

The fastest time in FP2 went to Charles Leclerc. Lewis Hamilton was just under four tenths behind him in fourth place. George Russell finished P5 with a few small mistakes on his fast lap. Both drivers are confident that there is still more potential in the W15 to unlock.

Lewis Hamilton

It’s been a good start to the weekend. We had a productive day and were able to run all three compounds. The balance of the car felt good, and I had a positive feeling out there. Several other teams look quick, in particular McLaren and Ferrari, but we’re a lot closer than we have been so far this season. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves though so let’s see how tomorrow goes.

I am really grateful to everyone back at the factory for working so hard to bring these updates. We are seeing improvements in the car and our performance on track.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We've had a productive day today. The car has been working well across the two sessions and we have been able to improve on the balance over the course of the day. The updates we have here all seem to be doing what we expect, which is encouraging, but the experience of the last few races has taught us that we have a fair size gap to close. We are hoping to close that gap progressively with developments over the next few events. There's still plenty that we can work on for both single lap and long run performance in the meantime. The gaps ahead aren't that big so we'll be looking hard to find a bit of additional speed overnight.