Lewis Hamilton concedes Mercedes may need to find "another way" to beat Ferrari given the power advantage at the Belgian Grand Prix.

The Italian team dominated practice at Spa-Francorchamps, with Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc gaining a full second on their rivals on the run from La Source to Les Combes alone.

Hamilton though doesn't believe the 0.9s margin between himself and Leclerc in the afternoon was representative.

"It’s practice, we definitely don’t have even half of that to catch, so I’m not sure where the time is lost, but I’m hopeful," he told the media post-session.

"All that time is on the straights generally and there’s not a lot we can do to generally catch that up. They’ve always been quick all year long on the straights, so I kind of had a feeling this weekend would work really well for them.

"We just kind of have to somehow apply the pressure another way if we don’t have it on pure pace."

Also Read:

• Verstappen says Red Bull threat 'track-dependent' but Hamilton remains wary
• Mercedes and customers take Spec 3 engine for Spa
• Vettel fears Ferrari third-fastest, claims Spa 2018 isn't his last F1 win

Mercedes are known for keeping pace in reserve in the run-up to qualifying and will expect to be closer on Saturday.

Also, Hamilton will be keen for a cleaner day than on Friday, when several issues hampered his progress.

"Yeah, not a great start for us in FP1, we had a problem with the throttle and I basically lost power," he explained.

"I managed to fix it a little bit with a couple of switch changes, and got it back and went back out and had another problem, so it was a little bit of a mess.

"We made some changes to the setup, it was quite far off into FP2, it was terrible in FP1, nightmare, and then this one was quite a lot better, but still have work to do."

The one bright spot for Mercedes though was their race simulation which proved superior to Ferrari.

"I think the long run was very strong. I’m about to find out now, but I was told Vettel’s times. He was in the high-50s I think, 51, mid-51s, and I was in the low-to-mid 50s on the long runs. So it will be interesting to know what fuel and tyre life that we had," Hamilton admitted.

"If we’re quick in the race, that could be good, but then you can be quick, but you can’t overtake them on the straights. So long as you can keep up with them, maybe you can do it on strategy. We’ll wait and see."