Hamilton and team-mate George Russell were unable to compete with the favorites in either FP1 or FP2 at the Hungaroring, regularly reporting struggles on the radio.
Hamilton appeared exasperated at one point when told of the gap to the pace of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who finished FP1 1.1 seconds behind the seven-time world champion.
“The car is a little difficult,” Hamilton said. “It’s crazy how he moves so much from track to track. Just [keeping my] up, trying to figure out how we can make the car work at this point.
“He’s a little loose and not doing what we want him to do. So yeah, tough day.”
Mercedes arrived in Hungary hoping to build on their season-best results of second and third at the French Grand Prix on Sunday, beating one of the Red Bulls at full pace and making the most of a difficult day for both Ferraris.
Hamilton noted after qualifying in France that, despite the gap with Red Bull and Ferrari, the car itself felt good, but this time he was less optimistic about the Mercedes W13.
“Nothing has changed in the car since last week,” said Hamilton. “This week I’m the same driver as last week. But for some reason, this track doesn’t work as well.
“I think once we get it right, the gap is about the same as last week, around a second.”
George Russell, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images
Hamilton revealed he also suffered some damage to his floor during the session which made it “quite tricky for long-term pace” in FP2.
“It will be a tough weekend, that’s for sure, but we’ll give it our all and see what we have,” he added.
His teammate Russell finished eighth in the second general practice, two tenths of a second ahead of Hamilton.
While he agreed it was not a pleasant day for Mercedes, Russell explained that the team experimented a bit to try and get to the bottom of their struggles in the rain expected on Saturday.
“The conditions for Sunday will be drastically different, so we were trying a lot of things with the car, using it as a bit of a test session because, to be honest,” Russell said.
“You can try to optimize some things for today, but that’s no use, it’s all for the rest of the weekend.
“Even though it was a very hard day, I think it was productive.”
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Russell said the experiments were “things to lean more on the car at the expense of maximizing or trying to get the most out of today’s lap time”, but the team was still “definitely a bit further from we would have waited.”
“But I think tomorrow will be a brand new day and Sunday will be a very different day as well, so all is not lost yet,” Russell said.