Hamilton buoyed by early performance in Baku after Mercedes ditched the Spa floor

Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton cut a positive figure after the opening day at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, insisting that Mercedes managed to find an encouraging setup for the challenging Baku street circuit.

Following a difficult Dutch and Italian Grands Prix, Mercedes reverted to the old-spec floor for Baku. Lewis Hamilton was seemingly confident in his modified W15, ending the opening session second before setting the third-quickest lap in the early evening practice.

Elaborating on his performance, the seven-time world champion noted: “Today was a really good day. I enjoyed it from the start as the car felt strong from the first laps on track. We made some positive incremental steps on the set-up.

"There was nothing we had to come back on, and we continued to build throughout. Pace wise, we didn’t complete a huge number of laps on our long run in FP2. We will have to do some comparisons tonight therefore to see where our relative speed is.

"Our usual competitors looked strong, but I think we are there or thereabouts. That is encouraging and was our hope coming into this weekend. We will stay cautious and vigilant though. We will work hard tonight to try and find more gains and see what we can do in qualifying tomorrow.”

His team-mate George Russell had a tough opening day at Baku. The Briton ended up eighth fastest in Free Practice 1 without any apparent issues.

The two-time F1 race winner missed the start of second one-hour session thanks to a precautionary PU change. He then missed a decent chunk of the second session before being called back to the pits with an issue a few minutes before the chequered flag fell.

“Today wasn’t the smoothest Friday we’ve ever had. Unfortunately, we lost a little bit of running time with a precautionary power unit change ahead of FP2.

"Once we were out on track, I wasn’t completely happy with the balance of the car. I was struggling to get the tyres in the right window and was lacking a little confidence. I’ll work hard overnight to improve on that, step my game up for tomorrow and close the gap. The good news is that Lewis was looking very quick out there.

"It encourages us that the car is strong, and we can be competitive this weekend. It looks very close between several teams, with Ferrari in particular looking strong. If we can make improvements overnight though we can aim to be in the mix for qualifying and the race on Sunday.”

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin sounded a positive note when assessing his team's performance on the opening day at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

“Lewis had two decent sessions and finished the day happy with the car. His pace also looked sensible although we know the areas we've got to work on. Overall, we’re pleased with how his weekend has started.

"As has been the case in recent races, it looks very tight at the front in terms of single lap, so we’ll be working hard overnight to find every bit of lap time.

"In comparison to Lewis, George had a more challenging day. He wasn’t very happy with the balance of the car in FP1, so we spent that session trying to improve it.

"Shortly after FP1 finished, we spotted an issue with the power unit that led us to take the cautious approach of swapping it out for FP2. That unfortunately cost him 25 minutes of valuable track time and whilst we got to run both tyres, the programme was compromised. We’ll be aiming to recover some of the lost ground with George tomorrow in FP3," concluded Shovlin.