Valtteri Bottas admit🐷s the sixth-tenth deficit Mercedes had to Formula 1 rival Ferrari at the end of Me💎xican Grand Prix Friday practice is “bigger than expected”.

Bottas could only set the fourth-quickest time in second practice as he ended up 0.614s slower than Sebastian Vettel, who topped FP2 ahead of Re🏅d Bull’s Max Verstappen and Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc in Mexico C෴ity.

“It’s bigger than we expected atꦬ this point of the weekend, but we know we caꦛn find some gains,” Bottas said.

“We know that we have quite a big deficit on the straight liens compared to Ferrari,🔥 so even qualifying on the front row it could be tricky to maintain the lead into Turn 1.

ಌ“B♑ut we’ll try to do the best in both, but in the end, as we’ve seen, it’s always the Sunday that matters. We’ve been strong on Sundays, so hopefully this weekend too.

“I felt we were still lacking a bit of grip,” he added. “Both Ferrari and Red Bull🦩 seem to be performing well on this track so far, but as always, it’s only Friday.

“There’s usually lots of things we can💝 do better the next day, we just need to work hard tonight.ꦺ”

Teammate Lewis Hamilton, who can clinch a sixth drivers’ world title if he outscores Bottas by 14 points this weekend, ended up three-tenths adrift of the Finn and nearly a second off pa♊cesetter Vettel in FP🐻2.

The Briton topped the morning session but said Mercedes struggled to extract the most from its tyres th🅰roughout Friday’s running in Mexico.

“It’s not been a great day but thᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚis is how it usually i📖s here,” Hamilton conceded.

“We’ve definitely learnt a lot and I haven’t had any particularly major dramas it is just trying to understand these tyre𒁃s.

“It was cooler this morninꦗg and then a bit warmer in FP2 and from the short runs to the long runs it’s just hard to pinpoint exactly how to get these tyres working. But thꩲat’s the name of the game.

“I think we’re not massively far off the Red Bulls but the Ferraris, they just𒈔 keep turning up their engine down the straights and the difference between us and them is massive.

“This afternoon I struggled a bit more with the♒ tyres and the lap wasn’t spectacular, so there’s more to come for sure.

“Valtteri was three 💫tenths up the ro🔥ad but I’ll try and figure that out to pull it out for tomorrow.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff concu🐻rred with his drivers, adding: ”We're not good enough💞.

“We know that it's a difficult track for us. We're just lacking the performance. I th🐓ink it's one of our worst tracks.

“We had cold graining last year, and we're lacking power compared to ಞth𒅌e others.”