Lewis Hamilton was pleased with his performance on the opening day of practice for the Italian Grand Prix on Friday.
The Mercedes AMG PETRONAS driver finished Free Practice 1 in second position, only 0.203s behind team-mate Nico Rosberg, while in Free Practice 2, Hamilton improved and reversed the roles to beat Rosberg to the top spot with a time of 1:22.801, improving on the fastest time set by Rosberg in the morning.
The Briton believes Mercedes look quite strong heading into the rest of the Italian Grand Prix weekend and is confident that Mercedes can stay ahead of the chasing pack.
“It’s been a really good day,” said Hamilton. “Monza is always an amazing track to drive and the fans always come out to show their support.
“We made good progress through our programme across the two sessions and our long run pace felt good. We split the tyre compounds between Nico and myself so we could learn as much as possible going into qualifying and the race.
“We’re looking quite strong. We’ve still got some work to do this evening to analyse all the data and prepare the car but I’m confident we can take the fight to the rest of the grid.”
