Mercedes brought a raft of updates for the W13 car to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in the hope of easing the porpoising problem that has blighted Hamilton and team-mate George Russell this year.
Mercedes showed signs of improving its relative pace to Red Bull and Ferrari through practice, and briefly led the timesheets in Q2 as its rivals opted to complete their first runs on used tyres.
Russell qualified fourth, beating Sergio Perez in the Red Bull, while Hamilton ended the session sixth, 0.762s off Charles Leclerc’s pole position time.
Although Hamilton noted after qualifying that he was “in the same position I was in the last race”, he was upbeat about the progress Mercedes had made to ease the porpoising problem.
“We don’t have the bouncing in a straight line, which is a huge, huge difference,” Hamilton said.
“But we still have some bouncing in like Turn 3 and Turn 9. So we still have some improvements to make, but the car’s a lot better.”
Hamilton added: “You see in Q2, we were quickest. So that’s a glimpse of hope for the team.”
Hamilton sits sixth in the drivers’ championship after five races, running a distant 68 points off leader Leclerc to leave any hope of fighting for a record-breaking eighth world title this year in serious doubt.
Asked if the step forward in Barcelona gave him a bit of hope that he might get himself back into contention for the title this year, Hamilton replied: “I’m not really putting my mind to that, I’m still way off.
“My team-mate’s fourth, so that means the car should be at least third or fourth, and I’m sixth. So I’m still struggling with the car.
“I don’t know how to get around that, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’ll just continue to try and work hard on myself.”
Russell agreed with Hamilton’s assessment that porpoising remained an issue going through the corners, but said the car could now be run closer to the ground than before.
"Through the corners itself it wasn't fundamentally different, just we had more grip and we could get the car closer to the ground and we know that would come with solving the porpoising,” Russell said.
“But I think we lost a lot of overall downforce to be able to achieve that, and the car's probably not quite as quick as we would like at the moment to be fighting with the guys at the front.
“Now we know this is our baseline, we can really build off that and find a lot more performance.”
Russell added that he was “confident” the updates have put Mercedes “a lot more in the mix” against Ferrari and Red Bull, which have swept the opening five races of the season.
“We've only got to look at today, it was not an optimal day and yet we still had our best result as a team,” Russell said.
“We were always there in the top three, top four generally all weekend, and it's the first time all weekend we were at the top of the timesheet during a quali session,” Russell said.
“It’s been an easier weekend for us and we're excited to see what the coming races bring. It's still going to take a couple more races until we really find a lot more pace.”
