Following the conclusion of FP2, Toto Wolff spoke about problems with Hamilton’s car and how Mercedes turned up the power more than usual during FP2 because of the weather forecast for Saturday. 

"It wasn't full attack, but it wasn't half attack either," said the Austrian to ORF. We already added a little bit more. Let's say, we drove on a performance level that we normally don't drive on Friday.’’ 

"We are a bit in the dark, especially with Lewis' time. There's a problem with the car.’’ 

"At the moment we don't know. The car is just all over the place in the slow and medium fast corners. But we have data channels for everything, and you have to take your time to look at that." 

Wolff also believes Verstappen and Racing Point have taken a forward compared to last weekend. 

"Compared to last week Verstappen has improved, and especially the Racing Points have really improved. 

"Everyone else is slower, just like us. But there is a lot of thinking and data to collect to see where the performance is." 

Asked why he struggled so much in FP2, Hamilton couldn’t put his finger on why that was the case. He ended up almost 0.7s off Max Verstappen and over 0.6s behind teammate Valtteri Bottas after problems on the soft tyre during his qualifying simulation. 

"That I don't know, I can't really say anything," said the Brit. "It felt relatively normal, but it was quite far off, so there's 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 the start of P2 felt pretty good, and then it just started to drop off. Others out there are quick, and Valtteri's obviously got good pace. Hopefully tomorrow it will be a bit better." 

With heavy rain and thunderstorms potentially delaying or cancelling qualifying, Hamilton would start down in P6 as the results from FP2 would form the grid. He admits he’ll try to a ‘’dry dance’’ so qualifying can go ahead on Saturday or Sunday morning. 

 "It will suck if we don't get to qualify, because it wasn't great, I'll be starting further back than even last week, so it will definitely make it challenging. I'm trying to do the dry dance, if there's a dry dance to make sure there's no frigging rain for Sunday."