Lewis Hamilton admits that McLaren is off the one-lap pace of the frontrunners at the Nurburgring, but the Briton is still hopeful of a good race – although he may have to do a rain dance.
Hamilton was fifth in the morning session and seventh in the afternoon, when his best time was a second off pacesetter Mark Webber.
“It’s been a productive day for us, I think we went through all the running plans that we had,” said Hamilton. “I think our race pace is perhaps closer than we had in the last race, which is a good thing, I think we seem to be maybe two or three tenths off at least the Ferraris, and then over a single lap they’ve definitely got about a second on us.
“We’re still pushing as hard as we can, the car’s feeling quite good, it’s just we can’t go any faster through the corners just through the car sliding. So we’re just going to refine the set-up, see if we can find some more downforce.”
Hamilton says the team is better off than at Silverstone: “The engine mode that we had in Barcelona and for example in Valencia works a lot better than what we had in Silverstone, just on that long run just there compared to the others it seemed two or three tenths, which is much, much better than the last race.
“We’re down on downforce, that’s the only thing that stops me and Jenson from doing the same laps as them, we just carry the same speed through the corners. Nonetheless we have made improvements this weekend, we’ve had some small updates which have been good. We need to just keep on going in that direction.
“The race is a completely different thing. Obviously the Ferraris and the Red Bulls are still massively quick, so we expect to probably be just behind them. Anything can happen in the race – who knows if it’s going to rain?
“We definitely can’t challenge for pole, but then having said that, we don’t know what fuel level everyone is on. So we might be pleasantly surprised tomorrow to find that we are heavier than others, and that again brings us closer. But historically, that’s not the case.”
Adam Cooper F1 