Hamilton: Surprising because this is my weakest circuit

Hamilton's best lap of 1:33.385 in the afternoon session compares to last year's pole-winning time of 1:33.194.

On Friday in Sochi, he was a couple of tenths faster than Bottas and over half a second up on title rival Sebastian Vettel, the Ferrari driver topped the timing screens at the end of FP1 in the morning..

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Hamilton said, "It was a good Friday. It has been a really good day, the weather has been decent – it’s not cold at least."

"Surprising because this is a weak circuit for me, probably one of the weakest, if not the weakest, particularly in the last year."

"I have really done a lot of work to try to understand the balance and understand where I can improve. Today has been good in that sense. Often this is one of Valtteri’s better circuits. But it’s obviously still close."

“From every race we’re learning more and more. From the last year here, we learnt a lot, we came here and particularly the last few races have helped us gauge where we need to be.”

Like most of the paddock, Hamilton was left wondering where Ferrari's pace had gone or if indeed it did go, "I don’t know what Ferrari were up to but we’re just focusing on us and trying to make sure the car is as a good as it can be."

“Normally this is a really good track for them. My strategists will have a better reading with what they’re doing with fuel and all those kind of things. I don’t know if they didn’t get laps today. It was definitely a solid one for us. So let’s hope it can continue tomorrow,” added the World Champion.