Lewis Hamilton worried about Mercedes top speed after Italian GP practice

Lewis Hamilton feels Ferrari has work to do to counter the Mercedes top speed at Monza following Friday practice at the F1 Italian GP

Lewis Hamilton feels Mercedes has a top speed advantage over Ferrari at Monza which will be crucial at the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix.

Ferrari delivered an engine upgrade at Monza as permitted under ADUO, and started its home round brightly with Charles Leclerc leading a 1-2 in first practice.

But in second practice George Russell fought back to top the session for Mercedes ahead of Leclerc in second with Hamilton down in fifth with a 0.457s deficit. While set-up changes appeared to backfire during second practice, Hamilton was also concerned by the superior top speed Mercedes demonstrated.

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“Straightline speed, it's considerable to worry about,” Hamilton said. “Just looking at the deltas just there, I was losing something like six tenths to George, just in the straights. Which is something we need to look into.

“Then just balance, it was really, really hard to pull the lap out of the car. It was not an easy one to drive in FP2 for some reason. So we made a couple of changes but it shouldn't have really been bad. So we might revert, but we're going to look and see if we can make the car better.”

Hamilton was unsure what was causing the top speed deficit to Mercedes but did given approval to the upgraded engine which is understood to provide 15bhp more and is estimated to halve the deficit to Mercedes.

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

“What we need to look into, if it's deployment,” Hamilton said about the deficit. “But the engine is an improvement which I'm really grateful for the guys back at the factory for working on. But our deployment schedule is different to the others, our competitors.

Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur also gave backing to the engine upgrade and felt the deficit to Mercedes was down to multiple factors rather than solely engine power.

“It seems like they maybe have less drag for the straights, so that's something we need to definitely look at,” Vasseur said.

“You have to keep in mind the performance in the straight line. It's the drag, it's the weight of the car, it's everything. It's not just the engine. We did a step for sure and we didn't bring ADUO2 for nothing. But I think we still have a decent gap.”