Lewis Hamilton has said he does not believe the Mercedes W07 is not running efficiently on Pirelli’s soft tyres, claiming he would rather have the tyres from last year’s Formula One season as opposed to the new construction Pirelli is using in 2016.
Hamilton put in his first low fuel laps on the soft compound tyre on Wednesday morning after spending his Tuesday session working mainly with the medium compound tyres.
Despite setting the fastest time on Wednesday morning whilst using the soft tyres Hamilton admitted he was not happy with the balance of the W07 on the soft tyres or the new construction of the tyre.
“I’m not feeling great, those tyres are not particularly good,” he said of the run.
“I’ve been pounding around doing multiple laps on long runs, which is not the most exciting.
“To get to light fuel is always an exciting feeling, but it’s always new when you get back to pushing for a single lap.
“The car is in a different ballpark, not the right one at the moment, and that’s what we need to work on.
“I genuinely wish we had last year’s tyres because these ones aren’t as good.
“Otherwise it was a good experience to get onto the softer tyre.”
Hamilton tried to calm down the hype surrounding Mercedes after several drivers claimed 2016 could see another season dominated by the silver arrows. He claimed he had not been taking any notice of the timesheets instead he had just been focusing on Mercedes’s test programme.
“Honestly, I haven’t looked at where everyone else is,”
“Everyone is naturally going to hype us up, every single person is going to hype us up.
“But you really don’t know what fuel load Ferrari is on, I think they have a strong package. Even Williams looks like it has quite a strong package.
“I wouldn’t take any notice of what they were saying, to be honest.”
