“We haven’t got far to go now. But we’ll keep developing the car for a little while.”; Mercedes enjoyed best weekend of the season at the Hungarian GP, with a pole position and a double podium in the race
Last Updated: 05/08/22 6:54am
Mercedes say turning one of their worst weekends of the year into their best at the Hungarian GP has made them “excited” for the second half of the season, and are promising more car improvements.
In the last race before the summer break in Budapest, Mercedes struggled back in the midfield in Friday practice but then claimed their first pole of 2022 and were in contention for the victory.
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell eventually finished second and third, beating the Ferraris on pure pace.
“We had to make a lot of changes overnight,” explained technical director Mike Elliott in Mercedes’ latest post-race debrief. “We talked on Friday about some of the things we’d done taking us in the wrong direction on setup.
“We lost the car balance, it became a mix of oversteer and understeer that the drivers were struggling with. We lost overall grip, and then on top of that we were managing a system problem that meant we had to run a little bit more cooling than we would normally, and also that was affecting our deployment.
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Lewis Hamilton said he is feeling really excited about the second half of the season after finishing P2 at the Hungarian GP.
“So overall there quite a few things that contributed to it. We didn’t know that we were going to fix all those. We knew why we were doing each individual change, but it was very exciting to see the pace that both drivers had on Saturday in qualifying.”
He added: “This last one was particularly satisfying because we weren’t relying on the misfortune of anyone dropping out with a reliability problem. The car pace was also very good, and it’s always nice to have a good race before you go into that period of holiday.
“The most satisfying thing though is to see where the car is now in terms of pace now in qualifying, in the race. We had a lot of ground to make up from the start of the year. We’ve been working hard trying to bring bits to every race, and it is really satisfying now to see that we’re racing with the Ferraris and Red Bulls right at the front.”
Mercedes appear to have got to grips with their W13 car and its porpoising, while their one-lap pace was a huge positive from Hungary.
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Toto Wolff was left delighted with Lewis Hamilton securing P2 at the Hungarian GP, but was quick to point out that Mercedes aren’t where they want to be just yet.
The season continues on August 28 with the Belgian GP and while Red Bull hold big leads in the drivers’ and constructors’ championships, Mercedes have promised more car upgrades.
“We’ve got more coming,” said Elliott. “We’re trying to bring some performance to Spa. That will hopefully close that gap. We haven’t got far to go now. But we’ll keep developing the car for a little while now.
“We’re quite excited though, the last few races have been the most fun we’ve had all year, and we’re just hoping we can take that extra step because we definitely want to be winning races in the near future.
“So we’re working hard to try to achieve that.”