The on-track action on Friday at the Baku street circuit proved rather chaotic, with FP2 in particular featuring near-constant yellow flags as many F1 drivers repeatedly struggled to make corners and took to the track's run-off areas.

Hamilton, who himself languished in 10th in FP2 after failing to get a lap together on the softest available compound – supersofts - believes that the high prevalence of driver error is down to tyres.

“The grip is very bad. I think it's bad for everyone,” Hamilton said. “I think everyone is struggling to get the tyres working, the Red Bulls and the Ferraris perhaps less than some others but everyone is struggling generally in the whole pitlane.

“These tyres are just so hard, they're too hard. You can't come to this incredibly warm place and have the track at 50 degrees, and these tyres still don't work, it doesn't make sense.”

Asked whether the track was more difficult to drive in 2017 than it had been during last year's inaugural Baku race, Hamilton said: “Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of it is contributed by these tyres being a lot worse, in the sense that, [they're] bigger, heavier, stiffer, harder, they just don't work a lot of the time.

“We're here at this circuit, where the track's 50 degrees, and we've got the supersoft and the soft and neither of them work.

“And it's almost like we have the hard and the extra-hard tyre here. Extra-hard's never even been made before, but it is the hard and the extra-hard, that's the compounds we have here.”

He suggested also that the issues were compounded by the fact the tyres lose temperature while drivers navigate their way out of run-off areas.

“Generally what happens is, you run wide, takes you ages to get into reverse, you reverse, by the time you've reversed and got it back into first gear and gone off, your tyres have dropped way, way out of the window.

“So then you're tiptoeing around for the next two or three laps, just trying to get temperature back into the tyres, it's a nightmare.”

Teammate Valtteri Bottas, who finished the day a tenth off pacesetter Max Verstappen, echoed Hamilton's sentiments, saying he would've preferred to see the ultrasoft chosen for this race weekend.

“Now, with quite hard tyre compounds for this track, it’s quite difficult,” Bottas reckoned.

“I’m sure everyone would take the ultrasoft if you could choose but those are the tyres for everyone. It’ll be our job to make the most out of that.”