Hamilton feels brake issues making performance a lottery despite step forward

Lewis Hamilton says the performance of his brakes have been a lottery this season after feeling he had made clear progress at the start of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix weekend.

Ferrari uses Brembo brakes compared to the Carbon Industrie version that Hamilton was accustomed to at Mercedes, and the seven-time world champion spent much of the first practice session at Imola complaining about his brakes. Those issues overshadowed what Hamilton believes was an unexpected performance gain after subtle changes elsewhere, but he’s uncertain how to get consistency from the brakes moving forward.

“P1 was good,” Hamilton said after finishing the first session in fifth and FP1 in 11th. “I was really, really happy with the car in P1. I felt like we had made a step forward and I was feeling really positive. I've literally changed two of the tiniest things that shouldn't have had barely any effect at all. The smallest change we've done this year.

“We had some brake issues that made a massive difference, so that was a fight with that. That's been quite a big issue all year actually. I've never experienced that before. So that's a new thing for me this year.

“It's not the transition, it's the performance…. It’s a lottery. We roll the dice and you put one [set of brakes] on and it works and you put another on and it doesn’t. So I hope tomorrow we figure something out. We're working on it, for sure.”

Hamilton’s teammate Charles Leclerc was on track on Friday after missing Thursday’s duties due to feeling unwell, and while his personal condition has improved, he’s keen for Ferrari to find gains when it comes to one lap performance.

“I'm feeling a lot better,” Leclerc said after being half a second off the McLarens in FP2. “Two days ago was pretty bad. Yesterday was better. Still not 100% but today I'm getting there.

“The whole FP1 was very tricky. We've had some different problems. FP2 we put everything together a bit more and it was feeling better on my side. But still we are lacking performance. Our weak point at the moment is the qualifying pace and we still need to work on that.

“To be better than today, yes [I’m confident]. To go and take pole, honestly I don't think we've got that in the car for now.

“But the race pace was strong, so that's positive. But it's also a track where overtaking is very difficult so we've got to focus on our qualifying pace. So that's where we are putting all our effort into and I hope that it will pay the prize for tomorrow.”