Feeling a constant progression through Friday in Baku, Lewis Hamilton believes he is in the mix with Red Bull and Ferrari.

Mercedes are striving to return to form after a difficult spell since re-emerging from the F1 2024 summer break, P5 their best result over the Zandvoort and Monza rounds, having claimed three wins out of four races going into that shutdown.

Lewis Hamilton has Red Bull and Ferrari in sight

Mercedes has reverted back to an old W15 floor for Baku as they continue to investigate this drop in performance, with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix race weekend starting very positively for Hamilton, who finished Friday in P3, 0.066s down on Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in P1, while Red Bull’s Sergio Perez in P2 was a mere 0.06s up on Hamilton.

In a split for what is the norm in Hamilton’s opinion, this time, he and Mercedes were “consistently building” through Friday as he expressed his belief that they can hang with Red Bull and Ferrari, though that will be confirmed or disproved on Saturday.

“It was a really good day,” Hamilton told the Formula 1 website.

“I enjoyed today, hit the ground running from the get go, made incremental steps with the set-up. For once it felt like we didn’t have any steps that we had to come back on, it was like consistently building.

“I don’t know how my long run is compared to others, we didn’t get a huge amount of laps. I think Red Bull seem pretty quick, as does the Ferrari, but we are there or thereabouts.

“I think we’ll stay cautious and try and do the best we can with what we have. I hope that we are [as] close to the front as it seems maybe, but we’ll find out tomorrow.”

It was not such a smooth day for Hamilton’s team-mate George Russell, who was delayed in starting his FP2 session due to a power unit change after the opening hour of practice.

He was then brought in to end his FP2 a few minutes early, due to what turned out to be “a sensor failure”.

“I was definitely off the pace compared to Lewis, I was struggling with confidence in the car and getting the tyres in the right window,” Russell continued.

“So I need to step up my game a bit for tomorrow and try and close that gap.”

Russell ended FP2 in P9, a second back from Hamilton.