Hamilton, who ended Friday practice third-quickest behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and teammate Valtteri Bottas, ran a different💫 rear wing configuration on his car as Mercedes split its strategy throughout the day.

In the first session Hamilton repo💯rted he was “massively slow on the straights” as he trailed a high-downforce set-up, before testing out a low-downforce approach for FP2.

“It’s a massively challenging circuit trying to find that balance, and this morning we had it one way, we changed it for th🙈is afternoon, it was verওy, very similar,” Hamilton explained.

“You gꦍo faster in the first and third sector but you go slower in the middle, or you go quick in the middle but slow in the other two. So trying to find that balance is very tricky.”

With mixed weather conditions forecast for the re🔴st of the weekend, the teams face a difficult decision over whether to favour outright top speed, or gamble🐼 on trying to boost their prospects for a potential wet race.

Hamilton warned the difference betwe♍en gettin🌠g the call right or wrong could prove make-or-break.

“Naturally if it’s guaranteed to rain then you 𒆙would want more downforce, but thꦓen if it doesn’t rain and the weatherman’s wrong - or the weatherwoman’s wrong - then you’re a sitting duck on the straights,” he said.

“So we have to be very, very careful and cautious✃ with the set-up changes we make over the next day. But it’s not our first rodeo.”

Bottas is leaning more towards maxing out his straightl𒐪ine speed given that he is sꩲet to drop five places on the grid for Sunday’s race after being penalised for triggering the Turn 1 chaos in Hungary.

“It didn’t look too bad today, the pace we had both in the short and the long runs was pretty decent,” said Bottᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚas.

“It’s always tꦡricky to compare i🌺n detail, from practice, but at least the feeling is good - that’s a positive.

“We definitely seem quite fast on the straightlines. Maybe l♛ess so in sector two, with all the corners, but probably for me, for the race, it’s important to be quick in sectors one and three.

“If it rains, you def𒆙initely want more downforce,” the Finn added. “So we need to see session by session hoℱw it’s going to look, but it’s going to be a key decision, what we choose for qualifying.”