Mercedes to investigate unhappy Hamilton's pace woes

Lewis Hamilton has called on Mercedes to come up with answers as to why he was so far off the pace in practice for this weekend's Styrian Grand Prix.

A few days following a turbulent Austrian Grand Prix weekend for Hamilton in which he was hit with a three-place grid penalty and five-second time penalty, the Mercedes driver emerged less than impressed with his W11.

With the possibility that the times in FP2 could form the grid for Sunday's race should qualifying be washed out by predicted storms, Hamilton was only sixth quickest, nearly seven-tenths of a second behind pacesetter Max Verstappen in his Red Bull, with Valtteri Bottas just 0.043s behind.

Mercedes confirmed post-practice that Hamilton wasn't "happy with his car", and that the team would "investigate more thoroughly this evening".

Asked as to what was not suiting him this week compared to last, Hamilton said: "I can't really say. It felt relatively normal but I was quite far off, so there is a lot of work that needs to go on in the background to try and figure out why.

"I was feeling good in practice one, and then the start of P2 felt pretty good, but it just started to drop, so I've no idea.

"Others out there are pretty quick and Valtteri's got good pace so hopefully tomorrow will be a bit better, we'll be in a better position.

"It does seem like the others are getting pretty quick, or we have slowed down, one of the two. We've just got to do some work to try and figure it out."

Given the weather forecast ahead, Hamilton is naturally hoping qualifying can go ahead and that he gets a shot at a more respectable starting grid slot.

"If we have to start there [sixth] that would definitely suck if we don't get to qualifying because I'm starting further back than I was last week [fifth, after the penalty], so it will definitely make it challenging," assessed Hamilton.

"I'll try and do the dry dance - if there is a dry dance - to make sure there is no frickin' rain for Sunday."

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