Lewis Hamilton sounds Ferrari alarm after striking Mercedes deficit

Lewis Hamilton has sounded the Ferrari alarm after revealing he was losing six-tenths to George Russell just on the straights on the opening day of the Italian Grand Prix.

Ferrari has introduced its second upgrade of the season at Monza this weekend as part of the Additional Developments Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) scheme.

While Hamilton found the car worked well in the low-speed corners, he remained behind Mercedes in the high-speed sections, of which Monza has many.

It left him fifth in second practice, almost five-tenths adrift of pacesetter Russell and over three-tenths slower than teammate Charles Leclerc.

The seven-time world champion had looked strong in first practice and revealed changes were made for FP2, with more changes expected going into Saturday.

Asked what the SF-26’s limitations were on the opening day, Hamilton replied: "Straight-line speed is considerable to worry about, just looking at the deltas. 

"I was losing something like six tenths to George just on the straights, which is something we need to look into. And then just balance. It was really hard to pull a lap out of the car. 

"It was not an easy one to drive in FP2 for some reason. So we made a couple of changes, but it shouldn’t have really been bad. So we might revert, but we’re going to look and see if we can make it far better."

Despite still not being happy with the power of Ferrari’s engine, Hamilton praised the new power unit and the work the team had done to introduce it.

Discussing whether he could feel the engine improvement, Hamilton said: "Yeah, yeah, yeah. The engine, it’s really nice to drive in the low speed. 

"It’s only a couple of low-speed corners here, but that’s not been a problem. They’ve done a great job with that."