20/07/2024
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton qualified fifth and George Russell 17th ahead of Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.
Cooler conditions greeted the team for FP3, with track temperature significantly lower than the sweltering conditions experienced on Friday. Solely running the Soft compound during the final hour of practice, George and Lewis ended the session P4 and P10 respectively.
A light rain shower that persisted throughout most of Q1 made the initial 18 minutes of Qualifying tricky. Running a second new set of tyres near the end of the opening segment, miscommunication rendered George unable to complete a lap as the track dried and was at its quickest. He was therefore knocked out in P17.
Lewis progressed through to Q3, although was unable to challenge the top-three. He improved to P5 on his second push lap and, despite a final run on the used tyre, had to settle for that position.
Lewis Hamilton: It's been very difficult to find a balance with the car this weekend where it's not snappy. That has likely been exacerbated by the heat but, even in the cooler conditions today, we still struggled. It was a real challenge to get the tyres working and we couldn't quite get them to where we wanted. If we had optimised everything, we could have likely gone one tenth or two quicker, but we didn't have enough to challenge for pole position today.
Tomorrow is forecast to be, like Friday, very warm. That will make it a challenge, but everyone is in the same boat. It will be interesting to see where our speed is relative to those around us. Our long run pace in practice was solid but we will have to wait and see where we fall out tomorrow.
George Russell: We didn't do a good enough job today. I was unable to put a lap together earlier in Q1 and that had left us vulnerable near the cut-off. After the red flag, we were on track at its most damp and then we didn't have enough fuel complete a push lap as it was at its most dry. We should have been comfortably through and that is frustrating. We shouldn't have been in that position though in the first place and that's on me. We will go through it tonight to understand what happened, what went wrong, and how to ensure it doesn't happen again.
P17 is clearly not where we should be qualifying. We should have a car to battle back into the points tomorrow though. We have shown good speed throughout practice and our long run pace was encouraging. Tomorrow is a new day, and we will see what we can achieve.
Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO: That was a very disappointing Qualifying session for us today. It was a total underperformance from all of us. Losing a car in Q1 is clearly not acceptable. George struggled to get in a solid lap earlier in the session and we didn't execute the final run at all. That stemmed from a lack of solid communication between ourselves and the driver. We need to ensure we learn from this so that it doesn't happen again.
Lewis made it through to Q3 but ultimately, we didn't have the pace to challenge for much more than P5. We were likely a couple of tenths slower than those ahead in normal conditions anyway, but we were struggling to get on top of the tyre temperatures. It was tricky to find the middle ground and that likely cost us a few more tenths. We need to dust ourselves down and come back stronger tomorrow. It will be a long race so hopefully we can create some opportunities.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: It was a very frustrating day today. We didn't manage the session well and because of that, George was knocked out in Q1. We will review all the communications to understand how we can learn from our mistakes but ultimately, we weren't joined up and sent the car too early for the fuel we had in the tank.
Lewis finished in a more representative position but aside from the early lap in the damp, the car just wasn't working particularly well in the lower track temperatures. We were struggling with an oversteer balance from relatively early in the lap, which was then getting away from us in the final two sectors. That cost us a lot of time but, even with the car in a better window, it's unlikely that we'd have been troubling any of the top three today.
We've left ourselves with a fair bit of work to do tomorrow. With Lewis, we'll be looking to see if we can get him into a position to fight for a podium. With George, we'll be looking for ways to get him back into the points and hopefully the upper reaches.
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Hungaroring here.