Hamilton: Red Bull are going to be quick here

Red Bull's Max Verstappen was quickest of all, but only a mere 0.008s faster than Hamilton's teammate Valtteri Bottas. The Finn was fastest in the morning session by three-tenths of a second over Hamilton.

Afterwards, Hamilton told reporters afterwards: "I am looking at every option and made lots of changes with the hope it is going to be better tomorrow. It's ok that Max leads this session, they are going to be quick here. Not a lot of differences between the chassis."

And later said in the team report: "It was quite a struggle out there, probably for everyone. I don't know if it's the track surface, the temperature or these inflated tyres - the pressures are higher than ever before - but we were all sliding around out there.

"We'll be doing a lot of analysis tonight with the hope that it's better for tomorrow but the times don't look terrible and we're in the battle, so that's positive."

"The Hard compound is the better-feeling tyre, it felt heavy-duty which is important with the temperatures here - the softer you go the worse it feels so I imagine the Hard tyre will be the one everyone wants to get onto in the race on Sunday," predicted Hamilton.

Team engineer Andrew Shovlin added: "In terms of pace we look reasonable and getting a single lap out of the tyres has seemed easier than it was in Baku or Monaco.

"However, neither driver is totally satisfied with where we have the car, so we've got a bit of investigation to do overnight to try and understand how we can get the balance to be a bit more predictable," added Shovlin.

Mercedes are looking to overturn a rare bad spell, which culminated with a zero points haul in Baku last time out, Hamilton trails Verstappen in the championship standings by four points ahead of round seven at Paul Ricard on Sunday.