The seven-time world champion ended the dry second practice session at the Hungaroring down in 16th on the timesheets, with team-mate George Russell in last, as the pair each used just a single set of mediums throughout.
But while aware that the squad was on a different programme to everyone else, Hamilton had a pretty downbeat assessment on the feeling from his W14.
“It wasn't feeling good,” he said. “It was feeling like the car at its worst today.
“But we will work on the set-up tonight and hopefully tomorrow, like last year where it felt terrible at the beginning, you turn it around with some set-up changes.
“So, we're working on that tonight. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.”
Russell was slightly more optimistic about where Mercedes stood in real terms, as he was equally aware that his team often has difficult Fridays before steadily improving over the course of the weekend.
“It didn't feel too bad in all honesty,” he said. “We were obviously on very different programmes to everybody else, as we only used one set of tyres throughout. It was a set of used tyres as well from FP1.
“So, the lap times don’t really give a true representation, and I'm sure tomorrow will be better. But we're still just focused on trying to improve.
“We always know that we sort of tend to get better as the weekend progresses, which is the right way round for it to be. There were a few interesting things we learned even in that one session, so let's see what we can do tonight.”
Source: Autosport