Hamilton and Russell in Hungarian GP disagreement in worrying Mercedes sign

22 July 2023 , 12:13

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Lewis Hamilton was glum after practice on Friday (Image: Sky Sports)

Lewis Hamilton issued a glum assessment of his Mercedes car's pace after a difficult day of practice in Budapest.

Friday practice was severely hampered by the weather as the rain poured in the Hungarian capital. And as if that wasn't enough disruption, teams were also hampered by a new qualifying system in play this weekend.

With teams forced to use specific compounds in each section of qualifying, teams are even more limited in terms of the tyres they can use in practice. So Hamilton only used the mediums in FP2, after which he was scathing in his assessment of his W14 car.

"It was not good at all," said the 38-year-old. "[It] was feeling like the car at its worst today. But we will work on the set up tonight and hopefully tomorrow.

"Last year [in Budapest] it felt terrible at the beginning, and we turned it around with some set-up changes. So, we will work on that tonight, and hopefully it will feel better."

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Hamilton only went 16th fastest in that session, while team-mate George Russell was rock bottom of the timesheets. But he had been at the top of them in FP1 earlier on Friday and, as a result was more upbeat about his car's true pace.

"[It] didn’t feel too bad in all honesty," said the younger Brit after the end of the day's running. "It was obviously on very different programs to everybody else, we only used one set of tyres throughout. It was a set of used tyres from FP1, so the lap times don't really give a true representation.

George Russell was more upbeat (Sky Sports)

"I'm sure tomorrow will be better. But you know we're still just focused on trying to improve. We always know that we tend to get better as the weekend progresses, which is the right way round for it to be. Few interesting things we learned, even in that one session, so let's see what we can do tonight.

"We're struggling just with a bit of overall grip. I don't think the tyres were in the right window just in the low fuel and high fuel. Just need to understand why that was. If we need to be taking a faster out lap, slower out lap for the qualifying stint, for the race run. If we need to be pushing harder, managing more."

Mercedes' overnight labours clearly paid off. On the soft tyre the W14 looked like a completely different car and Hamilton was able to top the timesheets, with Russell sixth. Team boss Toto Wolff said afterwards, however, that he does not expect the soft tyre to be much of a viable option for Sunday's race.

Daniel Moxon