Hamilton told Mercedes to run in rain at Suzuka

Lewis Hamilton says it was his decision to head out in the rain during the second free practice washout at Suzuka ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix in order to regain confidence his Mercedes had regained its pace in wet conditions.

The Formula 1 world championship leader completed the most laps of any driver, joint with Lance Stroll on four laps in FP2, as the session became largely non-eventful due to heavy rain which delayed the start of the session for 45 minutes due to track conditions.

Despite completing just four laps in the afternoon session, Hamilton says he pushed for Mercedes to allow him to run in order to understand the set-up tweaks to his car in the wet having claimed he was ‘over two seconds off' during his last outing in wet conditions – FP1 at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

“I was in the garage and I was getting bored so I was like ‘come on, let’s go out’ and the guys were like, ‘no, there’s lots of water, aquaplaning’,” Hamilton said. “I was like, ‘let’s just go,’ they were like, ‘no, no we wait’. I was like, ‘look I want to go out’ so they let me out.

“It was important for me because the car feels different in practice one to last week, massively, massively different. And in the rain at the last race we were like over 2s off, the car was terrible, so it was important for me just to go out and double check if that’s still the case here. So I did that.

“It was OK. But it also highlighted there are some other things we can improve so it definitely wasn’t a waste.”

Only five drivers set lap times in FP2 as Hamilton topped the timesheet in the wet, while finishing the dry FP1 session second to Sebastian Vettel by two-tenths of a second at Suzuka.