Mercedes had a tough opening day in Singapore as both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell struggled to string together any consistently strong laps, with the latter crashing out in FP2 to bring the session to a close.

While Russell claimed an unexpected podium finish last time out in Baku, his team mate arrived in Singapore insisting that he wanted to produce a better performance and maintain a positive outlook, which has so far not come to fruition.

The seven-time world champion finished outside of the top 10 in both of Friday’s practice sessions, ending the day 0.982s off the pace set by Lando Norris after the team made some balance adjustments to his car.

With competition among the top teams appearing incredibly tight, especially between McLaren and Ferrari, Mercedes will have their work cut out to start the race near the front of the pack.

Hamilton summarised the day as “very difficult” after he was outpaced by teams expected to be in the midfield, such as RB, Haas and Williams to finish in P12 and P11 across FP1 and FP2.

“We’ve tried everything set-up wise and nothing seems to work with the set-up, so definitely very challenging,” he said. “We’re really giving it everything and then you find out you’re a second off.

“I think ultimately [we’re] just a little bit lost and we’re not really sure where to put the car. At the moment, I won’t be going into Q3.”

Russell has generally appeared more confident than his 39-year-old team mate with qualifying in the W15, beating his team mate 13 times on Saturdays this season, but he had a disappointing end to his second practice session in Singapore.

The Briton had a small crash that damaged his front wing and left the team with work to do overnight after he locked up going into Turn 8, leading to him agreeing with Hamilton that it was a “really challenging Friday”.

“We were really off the pace today – we need to understand why that is,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll find some answers tonight.

“We made some big changes from FP1 into FP2, but the car’s just not feeling that well connected as it was this time 12 months ago and in recent races, so we need to try and get to the bottom of it.

“There’s a lot of surprises out there – you’ve got the VCARBs really quick, you’ve got the Williams really quick. The Red Bulls seemed to be off the pace and there seems to be a big gap to the McLarens and the Ferraris, so as a minimum we hope to be in between that midfield gap and the front four, but right now we’ve got a lot of work on our hands.”