Despite leading the way in both free practice sessions at the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace on Friday, Lewis Hamilton feels it will be close between the three front running teams for the rest of the weekend.
The Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team racer led team-mate Valtteri Bottas by 0.127 seconds in the morning session in Brazil, and although the gap closed in the second, faster session, he was still 0.048 seconds ahead of his team-mate in the afternoon session.
Hamilton said the Pirelli Supersoft tyre did not for as long as hoped during practice, so work will need to be done to see about extending their life ahead of final practice on Saturday, although he was excited about the speed of the 2017 cars at Interlagos.
“It’s been a good day,” said Hamilton. “It was pretty exciting to come to the track with the cars being so much faster this year.
“It’s physically more demanding than before which is great and it’s obviously quite warm out there today. We got through the long runs and the short runs; unfortunately, the tyres don’t really last very long, so you only get one or two laps on the short runs.
“Overall, we got through what we needed to do. We’re in a decent position but I think it could be quite close.”
