"It's strange coming here this weekend, we have a new record in tyre pressures, so they were obviously worried coming here this weekend," said the Mercedes driver.

"They pumped up the rears to 22psi, which is the highest we've ever had for any tyre, which is ridiculous. As long as there are no blow-ups, we'll do what we can with that."

Pirelli racing manager Mario Isola said, however, that the Italian company was ready to revise the pressure limits if data being analysed after the first day of action showed it had overestimated the forces that would be put through the tyres on the street circuit.

"What is going to happen now is we have the data from FP1 and FP2, and we are going to analyse the data, compare the real telemetry data with the simulations to understand if we need to modify the prescriptions," explained Isola.

"Of course we don't intend to modify the camber because the teams already set up the car with the camber, but we need to understand if we have room to modify pressure. That can mean going down or going up.

"If we underestimate the severity of the circuit maybe we are obliged to go up, or if we overestimate we can go down. Usually this doesn't happen for a circuit that we know because the simulations are very accurate and the historical data are available when we decide the preview.

"We do the same analysis after FP2 and in 100 percent of the cases until now we confirm the prescription. This could be the first case in which we have to change the prescription."

"[The two-second gap to Mercedes] is not nice, it's not good news. but some of it we can explain and other bits we have to wait to see what tomorrow brings.