Lewis Hamilton has signalled his hope that he can extract pace from his Ferrari car this weekend in Abu Dhabi after a challenging opening day of on-track action.
Hamilton missed the first practice segment of the weekend, with Arthur Leclerc behind the wheel as part of the mandatory rookie F1 outings.
The seven-time champion made his first appearance of the weekend in FP2, but could only muster the 14th fastest lap time.
Hamilton admitted he felt on the back foot after sitting out FP1.
“I feel OK, Arthur did a good job this morning,” he said. “It’s always cool to watch youngsters come through and do what they do.
“Ultimately, it puts whoever misses a session on the back foot but I did my best to get up to speed as quickly as possible.
“I was faced with quite a difficult balance in the session, so some work to do.”
Hamilton is still seeking his first podium finish of the season, with Sunday's race the last chance to keep his record of obtaining at least one podium every year alive.
Detailing how he is working to ensure he ends the year on a high, Hamilton said: “I still have hope that there’s potential in this car.
“My question to the guys, there are certain issues that we have, and I’m like ‘these are my problems, help me fix them. What can we do to improve our ride and the bouncing we have, and the understeer?’
“If we can fix those going into P3, then I think we could be in a slightly better position.
“The first and second sector, I was right there. Pace-wise, we were not so bad. It’s just when we got to the third sector, we’re missing seven tenths.
“If I can fix that, we can do better.”
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