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Lewis Hamilton says it was a difficult day for Mercedes at the Hungarian GP on Friday.
Lewis Hamilton says it was a difficult day for Mercedes at the Hungarian GP on Friday.
Lewis Hamilton says he expects a “tough weekend” at the Hungarian Grand Prix after more failed experiments left Mercedes well off the pace in second practice.
After a first double podium of the season at the French GP last weekend, there had been optimism that the Silver Arrows could build on that momentum, but they failed to do so in the heat of Budapest on Friday.
After finishing seventh, two places behind team-mate George Russell in the first session, Hamilton could only manage 11th in the second practice, this time three places behind the young Briton.
Hamilton’s last flying lap in FP2 was hampered by traffic, but he appeared on track only to challenge Fernando Alonso’s Alpine for sixth, meaning he would have fallen behind the two Ferraris, Max Red Bull’s Verstappen and perhaps more worryingly the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo. .
“The car is a little difficult,” Hamilton said. “It’s crazy how much it changes from track to track, but yeah, we just have to figure out how to make it work.
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Hamilton loses the rear at Turn 4 and tells the Mercedes garage that his car is unstable.
Hamilton loses the rear at Turn 4 and tells the Mercedes garage that his car is unstable.
“It’s a bit loose at the moment and it’s not doing what we wanted it to do.”
While last week’s double podium at Circuit Paul Ricard was perhaps a bit flattering, with Charles Leclerc retiring and Carlos Sainz starting from the back of the grid, Mercedes’ race day performance at Le Castellet looked to keep the team on an upward trajectory. .
They have been off the pace of Ferrari and Red Bull since the start of the campaign, with only an extremely strong reliability record allowing them to collect most of the podiums they have achieved this season.
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Ant Davidson and David Croft are on Skypad to look at the main talking points from the opening practice sessions for the Hungarian GP.
Ant Davidson and David Croft are on Skypad to look at the main talking points from the opening practice sessions for the Hungarian GP.
“Nothing has changed in the car since last week and I’m the same driver this week as last week,” added Hamilton. “It’s just that for some reason it doesn’t work that well on this track. But I think we did it well for once. The gap is about the same as last week, around a second.
“I couldn’t run at the end because I had some damage. I had some damage on the ground, so after that it was quite tricky for the long-term base. It’s going to be a tough weekend, that’s for sure. , but we’ll give it our all.”
“The experiments took us back”
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 immediately after second practice, Mercedes track engineering director Andrew Shovlin admitted that, not for the first time this season, experiments with the W13 had failed.
It looked like there was potential for Mercedes in the first session of the day, but the team’s decision to prioritize hard tire performance made it difficult to compare their performance with Ferrari and Red Bull, who focused mostly on soft tyres.
When Mercedes went soft midway through the first session, Russell was second and Hamilton fifth, both within three-tenths of the leading time at the time, suggesting they had closed in on their rivals.
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Mercedes track engineering director Andrew Shovlin says the FP2 experiments set them back.
Mercedes track engineering director Andrew Shovlin says the FP2 experiments set them back.
However, they were unable to replicate that level of competitiveness from that point on, particularly in the second session, as both drivers repeatedly voiced their frustration over the team radio.
“We came wanting to do some experiments with the car and I think the ones we did in FP2 took us back,” Shovlin said.
“In the first session, we looked a bit stronger and the car was more together, but there are a couple of things that we’re sure we’re going to undo overnight because it didn’t look great.
“Certainly in the afternoon, Lewis had taken a bit of damage during one of his fuel drops. That definitely affected his high fuel level.
“But like I said, I think some of the set-up changes we’ve gone the wrong way. But we’re here to learn and you don’t always get them to make the car go faster, but I think there’s two that we’ll do. during the night.”
“Wet weather could give us a bigger advantage”
The most encouraging thing for Mercedes this Friday evening was that the weather forecast predicted completely different conditions for the rest of the weekend.
After Friday’s heat and sunshine, storms are expected for both final practice and Saturday’s qualifying, while significantly cooler temperatures are expected for Sunday’s race.
“In a way that makes it not a bad thing that we had a difficult FP2, because I think we will face quite different conditions in FP3 and in qualifying, and then the race seems to be a lot fresher than today.”, Shovlin added.
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George Russell says it wasn’t the smoothest Friday for Mercedes, but he expects the weekend to be completely different.
George Russell says it wasn’t the smoothest Friday for Mercedes, but he expects the weekend to be completely different.
“It’s really a guess whether you’re going to do better or worse. Montreal, we were good in the wet, Silverstone we were good. Where we were today, I think we’d do a wet session just because it kind of gives us more potential, but already We’ll see. We’ll have to start running in FP3 and see what we’re dealing with.”
Russell also offered an upbeat outlook on the team’s difficult day.
“It definitely wasn’t our mildest Friday so far, but a bit strange because we think it’s going to be wet tomorrow for qualifying,” he said.
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Martin Brundle says there could be a lot of traffic at Turn 13 during qualifying ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Martin Brundle says there could be a lot of traffic at Turn 13 during qualifying ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix.
“The conditions on Sunday will be drastically different, so we were trying a lot of things with the car, using it as a test session because, honestly, you can try to optimize everything for today, but that’s no use. rest of the weekend, so even thought it was a really hard day, I think it was productive.
“We were definitely a little further along than we probably would have expected, a couple of issues here and there.
“But I think tomorrow will be a brand new day and Sunday will be a very different day as well, so all is not lost yet.”