Mercedes kept their lapping to a minimum in the wet practice on Friday, unlike Ferrari. Hamilton explained why he did so few laps.

It wasn’t about the risk. It was more just we have a certain amount of sets of tyres and if it rains tomorrow in qualifying and [final practice] we want to use those other sets that we have and save them for qualifying. When the tyre’s brand new it has sharp edges on the tyres. For example a tyre that’s used, once you scrub the tyre in you start to tear those edges up and what that means is it doesn’t get rid of the water quicker enough. You have less grip and less efficiency. Naturally when you do qualifying you want fresh, brand new tyres to have as many shots at it.

But I see the Ferraris just pounding around, destroying their tyres. They’ve gone in [second practice] again pounding around and they’ve got no tyres left. So if it is wet tomorrow they’ll have one set less than us. It might not hinder them too much but we think more long-term. I could pound around and do 10, 15, 20 laps and it wouldn’t make a difference, I’d still be able to do the time that I did. You can find some things on your laps but better to do it in qualifying, or [final practice] at least.