Lewis Hamilton is worried he might not even qualify in the top 10 for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
After sitting out first practice on Friday so rookie Frederik Vesti could drive, Hamilton took the wheel of his Mercedes W14 again in FP2. But he managed to go just eighth fastest in an incident-hit session which was red-flagged twice.
George Russell didn't fare much better by going sixth fastest, both Brits slower than Charles Leclerc. The other Ferrari, driven by Carlos Sainz, didn't set a time before he crashed early in the session.
Just four points separate Mercedes and Ferrari heading into the final race of the year. And Hamilton is worried he and Russell will face an uphill task in the race if they are to hold on to second place in the standings.
"It was not the greatest of days," he said. "We have had difficult qualifying sessions this year and getting out of Q1 and into Q2 has always been a tough battle, and getting into Q3 is a challenge. The work tomorrow is to try and get into Q3. But it is going to be close."
With 10 rookies on track in first practice and the second session affected by two red flags, most teams learned little about where they stand compared to their rivals. Without that information, Russell prefers to look on the bright side.
He said: "There were a lot of rookie drivers out there on track in FP1, so we didn't get a completely clear gauge of where our relative pace was. Fred did a good job for the team though, and we got a lot of useful data to look over. FP2 was clearly an interrupted session so, again, we couldn't get a read on where we were stacking up against our competitors or a true picture of where our pace may be."
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Russell had topped the timesheets in FP1 but it was Leclerc who went fastest in the second, more representative session of the day. Lando Norris was fast enough for second place ahead of Max Verstappen who almost got into a tangle with the two Mercedes cars in the pit lane.
British drivers Zak O'Sullivan, 18, and Jake Dennis, 28, made their Formula 1 weekend debuts for Williams and Red Bull respectively, while Ollie Bearman, 18, who in Mexico became the youngest debutant from Britain at a Grand Prix, was handed his second practice appearance by Haas.
Dennis, in Verstappen's Red Bull machine, finished 16th of the 20 runners, 1.1 secs off the pace. O'Sullivan was 18th - seven tenths behind Williams' Logan Sargeant - with Bearman 20th and last, albeit only a tenth slower than Kevin Magnussen in the other Haas.