Lewis Hamilton hails Mercedes’ “best day” of F1 2024 in Monaco

Lewis Hamilton says Mercedes had their “best day” of the 2024 F1 season on Friday at the Monaco Grand Prix.

The seven-time world champion topped opening practice in Monte Carlo before ending the day with the second-fastest time, just 0.188 seconds behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

And Hamilton was delighted with Mercedes’ positive start to the weekend.

“It’s been a good day, definitely. The best day we’ve had, on-track,” Hamilton said.

“The car was a positive, I enjoyed driving it. The track is amazing. The grip is quite good. We still have some challenges with the balance but it looked strong.”

Hamilton capped off an encouraging showing from Mercedes at the legendary street circuit, having arrived in Monaco off the back of largely disappointing start to the season.

The 39-year-old Briton said his Mercedes W15 was much more enjoyable to drive around Monte Carlo than its previous two predecessors.

“What was a surprise was the grip level and how the car was reacting,” Hamilton said. “Definitely a more enjoyable ride than we’ve had here previously, in the last two years particularly.

“The second session, I don’t know if we improved. On the long runs we have to work to do overnight to make sure we can make it until the end of the race. We need to improve long run pace and graining.”

Hamilton’s teammate George Russell was only 10th in FP2 after struggling with vibrations in his car.

There will be some caution at Mercedes given they have enjoyed encouraging Fridays already this year, only to dramatically drop away in competitiveness as the weekend has progressed.

“Overall, we've had a pretty good day with both cars,” said Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.

“FP1 was productive. We pulled forward the FP2 soft into that session as we expected rain although that never materialised and meant we were on used tyres for the low fuel soft in the afternoon.

“George was struggling with a vibration on braking - we need to get on top of that for tomorrow as it appeared to get worse during the course of the day and was very intrusive this afternoon.

“However, the underlying pace of the car seems good. Our long run needs some work as we've got to be a bit kinder on the front tyres on Sunday but we've got some options for that.

“We've also got to track the circuit as the grip comes up but it's encouraging that we seem to have a decent platform to work from.”