Lewis Hamilton admitted that Mercedes was not where it wants to be versus its front-running rivals after the opening day of running at Sochi.

Hamilton concluded his day fourth fastest, a little over a tenth behind teammate Valtteri Bottas but 0.798s adrift from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, the afternoon session’s pace-setter.

The reigning world champion said it had been “a day of discovery” for Mercedes during which the team’s progress was matched by the improvements of its opponents.

Hamilton, Bottas aiming to avoid more Mercedes team orders

“It’s been a day of discovery and exploring. It started off not too bad and while we’ve been improving, the others made some big progressions and improved much faster than we did,” he said.

“Our pace was a little bit better in FP2, but still not where we want to be. We’ll work very late tonight to understand what we can do better and make some changes to the car for tomorrow.

“It’s good to see the competition doing so well, but naturally we want to be in a fight with them, so that’s what we’re working towards.”

Hamilton hoped the heavens would open above Sochi on Saturday to help level the playing field.

“It’s going to be a tough day tomorrow, but I hope it’s going to be raining,” he added.

“I don’t think we’ve ever driven here in the rain, so that would make it pretty interesting.”

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