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Hamilton: Crazy how the car swings from track to track

Jad Mallak

Hamilton: Crazy how the car swings from track to track

Lewis Hamilton was surprised how his Mercedes’ performance swings from track to track after a tough Friday for the team in Hungary.

Mercedes had a tough Friday in Budapest, as both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell struggled to get their W13 behaving they way the want it to around the Hungaroring.

In FP2, Lewis Hamilton was 11th fastest only 1.102s off the pace, while George Russell was eighth two tenths faster than him.

That comes after what Mercedes believed was a decent weekend in France, where they raced to second and third, Hamilton leading Russell.

Hamilton was left bewildered by his car’s pace and said: “The car was a struggle today, it’s crazy how it swings from track to track and tonight we’ll be working on setup to try and get the car working.

“At the moment, it’s a little loose and not doing what we want it to do,” he revealed. “Not much has changed since last week, I’m still the same driver! But for some reason at this track, the car isn’t working as well.

“In the glimpses where it was working, we were still down a second which was actually similar to last week.” the seven-time Formula 1 Champion admitted.

“I didn’t get much chance of a long run at the end because I sustained some damage to my floor and lost a lot of downforce. It’s going to be a tough weekend, but we’ll give it everything,” he concluded.

Mercedes was gathering lessons on Friday

George Russell might have fared a bit better than his teammate, but was also left ruing a tough day in the office on Friday in Hungary.

“It definitely hasn’t been our smoothest Friday this season, a bit of a strange one because we think it’s going to be wet for qualifying tomorrow and then different again on Sunday,” Russell said.

“We tried quite a few things with the car and used today as a test session so while it’s been a tough day, it’s probably been a productive one.

“Today was about gathering lessons long-term rather than maximising our lap times, but we were further behind than we probably expected with a couple of issues here and there,” he revealed.

“Tomorrow is going to be a totally new day and Sunday, we’ll be in a different place too,” the 24-year-old concluded.