Down on pace in Friday practice, Lewis Hamilton revealed Ferrari found “some problem” with his SF-25 that was costing him downforce at the Barcelona circuit.

He’s hoping that once that has been fixed, he will be in a “better place” for the remainder of the Spanish Grand Prix weekend.

Lewis Hamilton was off the pace in FP2 in Spain

Having secured back-to-back top-five results in Imola and Monaco, Hamilton was hoping to continue that upward trend in Spain as he sought to recover from a slow start to his Ferrari career.

However, Friday turned out to be “not a good day” for the Briton.

Hamilton was almost eight-tenths down on pace-setter Oscar Piastri in the second of Friday’s two practice hours, and was 0.273s slower than his team-mate Charles Leclerc.

“That was bad,” the seven-time World Champion complained to his race engineer Ricciardo Adami during FP2. “Is anyone else struggling?”

He later told the Italian: “That car is not drivable, mate.”

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But at the end of day that was “not a good” one, he revealed to Sky F1 that there was a problem with his SF-15 that was costing him downforce.

Hamilton did not go into detail about the issue, but says he hopes that once it has been resolved, he’ll have a better weekend.

Asked how he was motivating the team after a trying day at the Barcelona circuit, he said: “I wouldn’t say that I’m motivating the team at the moment. I mean, you just keep your head down, you just keep working and working away.

“Just don’t give up. You just keep going, you keep pushing. You keep trying to focus on solving the issues and try to do…

“So you arrive on a Friday and you’re hoping for a good day, and it doesn’t go well. But then, you have a weekend in Monaco where suddenly the car feels great.

“And then, honestly, I thought the car was gonna be good today, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t too bad in P1, P2 was quite a lot worse.

“So naturally, that’s frustrating for everyone, but we had some problem which meant we were losing some downforce so hopefully with that fixed for tomorrow, we’ll be in a better place.”

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur was asked about Hamilton’s complaints over the radio, but was adamant the car was not as bad as Hamilton made it out to be.

“The comments were a bit extreme on the radio today,” said Vasseur on Hamilton, “but he did also a strong last stint with the soft in the lap time of the first two.

“It means that the car was not so horrible than he said in the radio.

“But again, the comments that they are doing when they are into the car, for me, it’s not a drama.”

Hamilton will line up on the Spanish Grand Prix grid on Sunday P6 in the Drivers’ standings where he is 98 points behind championship leader Piastri.

Ferrari are fourth in the teams’ standings with 142 points to McLaren’s 319.

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