Lewis Hamilton has been left “praying” for his Ferrari power unit after it caused an early retirement in second practice for the Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix.
The seven-time world champion suddenly lost power down the start-finish straight after 28 minutes, leading to him stopping at the exit of Turn 3 at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
Hamilton was enjoying a competitive FP2 until then as he was quickest on the hard tyre and sat amongst the top five, before eventually dropping to 11th in the final leaderboard.
But it was still a positive day for the Scuderia, as Hamilton’s team-mate Charles Leclerc topped both Friday practice sessions heading into FP3 and qualifying on Saturday.
“I was feeling really good in the car,” said Hamilton. “It’s just my luck. We did a really good job in getting the set-up in a better place and yeah, it’s just really unfortunate.
“I think we’re really competitive this weekend as a team and then didn’t get to do the long run. So I have no idea how, but I know it’s really hard to overtake here. As you saw some people out there.
“So they’re still investigating to find out what was wrong and just praying that everything’s OK.”
Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari
The 41-year-old reckons the engine failure has left him on the “back foot” because he spent the first half of FP1 with an aero rake on his SF-26, completing just 25 laps.
But many others also had a slow start to Friday as 10 ‘rookies’ contested opening practice, with Ferrari being the only team that didn’t field a young driver.
“I missed a little bit of time in FP1 because we did the rake running,” added Hamilton.
“Normally I would have one of the young drivers do FP1 at this track like most people did. But I opted to do it somewhere else.
“So basically I’ve only really had one session, because I missed pretty much at least half of that session. So, I mean, I don’t really know where we would sit.
“I don’t think I need to make many changes to the set-up. I probably want the same because we were very quick.
“I think I already had a loss of power earlier on in the lap and we’re still quick. So, yeah, I’ll give it everything tomorrow and just try to do the best with whatever I have.
“But it obviously feels like we could be close to competing for the front row.”
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