According to Lewis Hamilton, the Mercedes showed their worst side in Hungary, but according to his team-mate their situation isn’t so bad.
Mercedes finished 16th and 20th at the end of Friday’s Hungarian Grand Prix. George Russell was the first to finish the first hour, but the value of the rainy training and his fastest lap after the wave was highly questionable. Then the Briton went from start to finish, while with Lewis Hamilton, who did not run a single lap in the previous practice session, he got a deficit of more than a second against Charles Leclerc.
We can’t attach too much importance to this either, since as the seven-time world champion revealed, they only used one medium tire to save money to keep allocating new tires for the weekend. “We only had one tire, and that’s all we could use in practice. It’s not a good arrangement at all, and it was changed this weekend. Basically, we go lower. It’s not ideal.” – The British criticized the new rule.
However, he was not only unhappy about this, but also unhappy about his car. His Mercedes looked very problematic in slow corners and he confirmed it.
“No, I didn’t feel good at all. We really got the worst of the car today.”
“But we’ll work on the settings in the evening. Last year too, we felt it was horrible at first, and then we switched it up with some setting changes. We’ll work on that tonight and hopefully tomorrow it’ll be better.” said Hamilton.
Russell, although he finished last, disagreed with his teammate’s judgment. According to him, the W14 was not hopeless, and there were specific reasons for their weakness.
“Honestly, I didn’t feel that bad. Of course, we ran a completely different program compared to the others, we only used one tire. In addition, it was a used set from the first practice. So the lap time does not accurately reflect the situation, we will be better tomorrow.”
“We’re trying to improve. It’s always usual for us to improve as a weekend progresses and that’s the best direction. We also learned some interesting things in this training session – we’ll see what we can do in the evening.” Said the one-time race winner less pessimistic than Hamilton.
According to Russell, rubber use is behind the decline, but this can be helped by studying the data. “We didn’t have grip, the tires weren’t in the right range, not enough or too much fuel. We have to know why it was like this, whether a slower or faster lap should be needed on the qualifying lap, or whether we should save more or push more on the long stage.”
George Russell (Photo: XPB)“It’s hard to understand sitting in the car because you don’t see the data, whether the tires are too cold or too hot and what we need to be faster.”
“It wasn’t our best day, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t our first bad Friday either. Saturdays and Sundays are usually better.” Russell pointed out.
