Satisfactory return for the Mercedes from the summer break in Free Practice of the Dutch Grand Prixwith the two drivers of the Brackley team both in the top-5 in both FP1 and FP2 on Friday. However, if the first session was hampered by bad weather and strong winds, with Lewis Hamilton in third position followed by George Russell5th, the latter has achieved the best time in the second session.
Mercedes on the attack
The British stopped the clock on1:10.702with an advantage of only 61 thousandths of a second over Oscar Piastri’s McLaren, a team that was also the protagonist both for the updates brought to Zandvoort and for the best performance in FP1 by Lando Norris. Innovations also brought by Mercedes, with a W15 that features a new bottom: “It was nice to get back into the fray, but also very difficult with so much wind. – Russell explained at the end of the tests – I don’t remember the wind being this strong in recent years, but in any case the car has been very good and works as expected. We seem very close to McLaren and Verstappen, but tomorrow everything could be different“.
There is no shortage of unknowns
Third, just like in FP1, Lewis Hamiltonwinner of the last Belgian GP after Russell’s disqualification. Good feelings for the seven-time world champion, even with the need to continue working on the set-up in view of the next tests: “Now we have a much better machine – he declared – so we can start on the right foot from the beginning and then optimise the car here and there. This definitely helps us a lot and makes our job more enjoyable. I think we still need to make some steps forward in terms of performance and work on the set-up. On the long run we haven’t interpreted the data yet, it’s difficult to say, but I don’t think we were particularly fast, but I think that the set-up was more oriented towards qualifying. I think there will still be some unknowns this weekend, due to the wind and not only, but we can fight for the top five positions”.
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