Lewis Hamilton was left feeling downbeat after the opening day of practice at the Belgian Grand Prix, with the Mercedes driver acknowledging that being 1.2 seconds behind Lando Norris’s pace-setting time in FP2 was “not great”.

The Silver Arrows arrived into the weekend off the back of a good run of form, having clinched back-to-back victories in Austria and Great Britain before Hamilton took a podium in Hungary.

FP2: Norris tops the second practice times ahead of Piastri and Verstappen in Belgium

However, the team did not look to have quite the same pace as they hit the track at Spa-Francorchamps on Friday, with Hamilton ending second practice in 10th on the timesheets, though the seven-time world champion took fifth place earlier on in FP1.

Asked for his reflections on the day after jumping out of the car, Hamilton explained: “It was a pretty bad day. I don’t know what to say! Obviously it’s been feeling great in the past couple of races, it just felt completely different today.

“We worked on it, the first session was not great, but then in the second session we made some changes. It started off great, and then when I got to the soft tyre I just couldn’t improve, and there’s a bunch of balance issues we have through that.