Lewis Hamilton says there is more potential to extract from his Mercedes Formu꧂la 1 car as the team♐ continues to work on solving its recent performance issues at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Valtteri Bottas headed te🐼ammate Hamilton by just 0.003s in a closely-fought second practice session as Mercedes ended Friday’s running on top.

While recently-crowned five-time world champion Hamilton said he could feel a vast improvement in his Mercedes car, he conceded his team still has work to do to full💝y rectify the problems that led to a sudden performance dip at recent races in Austin and Mexico.

“The car felt better than it did in Mexico, but we are still working our way through sജom🌜e issues,” Hamilton said.

“The pace 🌜doesn't seem too bad, so we just have to keep working on it and improving it. In FP2, it was quite windy and very gusty through the corners, which mean﷽t that the car was actually quite tricky to drive.

“We just need to make sure that we are quick enough in the dry. It's very close between all 🗹of us at the front, but I think there's more potential in our car, so we just need to try and squeeze it out.”

Bottas ended up only sixth in opening practice but recovered strongly in the afternoon to set the quickest time of the wee🀅kend so far in FP2.

“It was a bit of a mixed da♔y; FP2 was much better than FP1,” Bottas explained.

“The morning was quite difficult, it w♏as easy to make misꦦtakes. I had a few lockups and aborted laps, so it was difficult to build a good rhythm.

“But we👍 really improved the car for the🥂 afternoon and I managed to find a rhythm. The pace seemed to be good, but it is a short track, so the margins are small.

“There was not a lot of tyre drop-off today, but we're expecting warmer temperatures, so we will hav🌼e to wait and see if t🐟hat might bring about some issues.

“It is very close between the top thre🍃e teams, so we can't feel satisfied about our results today; we know everyone else is going to be working on their performance overnight, so we will have to keep pushꦰing as well.”

Mercedes technical direc♌tor James🍌 Allison added: “We got the short-run pace good, although we think there's more to come tomorrow.

“The long-run pace was there or thereabo♑uts, but I think that we have work to do overnight - as probably do our competitors - to get the car in a place where it is going to be alright for the hotter track🙈 that is coming on Sunday.

“So lots and lots of things for us to think about overnight, just one short one-hour session tomorrow to confirm 💛everything and then we're off to find out whether we've made a good job of it or not.”