Optimism at Mercedes as Lewis Hamilton hails ‘best session of season’ at Japanese GP

Two weeks ago Mercedes endured a brutal Australian Grand Prix.

If Friday at Suzuka is any indication, the Silver Arrows might deliver a strong bounceback at the Japanese Grand Prix.

The team left Melbourne battered, bruised, and without anything to show for their efforts Down Under. Lewis Hamilton’s day ended early as his W15 suffered a failure after just 15 laps. While George Russell remained in the fight for points, an accident on the penultimate lap while battling for position with Fernando Alonso ended his day, and shut Mercedes out of the results.

The team turned their focus to Japan — and Team Principal Toto Wolff changed his plans and made the trip to Suzuka after all — and Friday’s practice sessions left the team singing a more optimistic tone ahead of Saturday.

“We’ve done a lot of work over the last week focused on making the car more consistent. We’ve seen across the first three races that we have sessions where we look strong, but when it comes to qualifying and the race, we’ve fallen short of our expectations,” said Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin in the team’s post-practice report. “It’s too early to say whether we’ve made the progress that we are hoping for, but it is encouraging that the drivers are happier with the feel of the car. The data also suggests that we have got the tyres in a better window.”

For Hamilton, it was the best day of the season.

“FP1 was a great session for us. It was the best session for us so far this year and the best the car has felt,” described the seven-time champion. “I felt very positive and excited heading into FP2 as this is a circuit that every driver loves to drive.”

While rainy conditions cut short the second practice session, Hamilton still believes the W15 is in a good place heading into the weekend.

“In the last two years here, we’ve struggled with a car that has had an inconsistent balance and has been difficult to drive. The team has done a lot of great work since Australia, and we seemed to hit the ground running today,” added Hamilton. “The car was definitely in a sweeter spot. We’ve got a better baseline to start from this weekend and hopefully we can build on that.”

Russell also hailed the good start to the weekend, but offered a word of caution to Mercedes fans that weather conditions could be playing a bigger role than anything else.

“We performed better than we expected to in FP1. That was a pleasant surprise, and the car was feeling really nice to drive. Both Lewis and I were happy with the overall balance. The W15 has been performing better when the conditions are cooler though, so that is a note of caution,” outlined Russell. “Our focus today was trying several test items and experiments to make the car more consistent in variable conditions. Time will tell whether these have had the intended impact and it was frustrating that we couldn’t evaluate these further in the afternoon.”

Mercedes will get one more crack at putting the W15 in the ideal window before qualifying on Saturday.

But after how their trip to Australia ended, this is exactly the start to the Japanese Grand Prix the team was searching for.