leclerc
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Lewis Hamilton was sore after his Mercedes struggled with bouncing on the straights in Friday practice.

He said that he would get by after finishing the day 12th fastest. At the end of the straight, we're hitting some serious speeds.

George Russell said the new rules need to be reconsidered.

Russell doesn't believe it's right to run like this for the next four years.

Everybody is in the same boat, so conversations are going to be necessary.

Following the introduction of new rules aimed at closing up the field and making overtaking easier, teams have been affected by bouncing on the straights.

The bouncing problem with which Mercedes are struggling more than most is a result of these changes.

The world champion hoped they had gotten on top of it with some changes made for the Spanish Grand Prix two races ago but it has returned on the long pit straight this weekend.

Russell is a director of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association.

It's not comfortable to drive a car that is fully bottoming out. I don't know what the future holds for this era of cars, but I don't think we can continue like this.

Both cars were struggling to bounce on the straights.

No other driver was as upset as the Mercedes pair was.

Sainz said that he struggled with the phenomenon which hadn't been there the last few races and it looked particularly bad on his side of the garage.

I need to talk to the engineers about it. It took out a bit of confidence on the straights and the brakes.

Changes to F1's structure have led to the transfer of the team under Brawn who developed the rules.

The fastest Mercedes driver was Russell, who was in seventh place and 1.3 seconds off the pace-setting Charles Leclerc.

It didn't feel great to try something new on my car. We got data on it after trying it. We are going to go through it and hopefully we will return to what we were before.

It's a long way away, 1.6 seconds or 1.3 seconds. It's on the straights.

Azerbaijan
Lewis Hamilton appeared to struggle in his Mercedes

Ferrari and Red Bull close again

The Monaco Grand Prix winner said he had had a good Friday.

Verstappen was 0.108 seconds behind Leclerc. The Alpine features a major aerodynamic upgrade and Fernando Alonso was fourth fastest.

The nature of the sessions made it hard to understand the true performance picture.

Leclerc thinks it will be a hard fight. We have improved from P1 to P2 but there is still more to do.

Nobody really put a lap in in P2 but Max and Carlos didn't improve on the softs so there are still quite a lot of question marks.

The race pace was very strong and the degradation was good, so that's positive.

After three races, Leclerc has a 46-point lead over Verstappen and a nine-point deficit after four Red Bull wins.

He thought he would regain the advantage as the season went on.

Leclerc is confident that they will take the lead at some point.

The race pace was close between Red Bull andFerrari.

Red Bull had looked the team to beat in the first session, in which Perez was fastest and when he and Verstappen were clearly faster on the straights, a key factor in a track where they are so long.

In the second session, Leclerc moved into his customary position as the one-lap pace-setter, as the deficit on the straights narrowed.

Verstappen took to the track late at the start of the second session as Red Bull made repairs to his rear wing, which was malfunctioning after the opening session.

His simulations were disrupted by traffic. At the end of the session, he only completed two laps.

Verstappen complained about understeer in the first session and appeared to be struggling with a loose rear end early in the second, as Perez appeared to be more comfortable in his Red Bull.

Following his victory in Monaco last time out, Perez appears to be in good shape.

Perez said that P2 didn't go as well as they would have liked. We may have taken wrong directions, or we may have just been exploring and not been able to spot our problems.

We have the data on both tires. We hope that we can put it all together for qualification. I feel like I'm in a good place.