After a spectacular recovery, the Mercedes team managed to add the first pole position of the season in the last Hungarian Grand Prix thanks to the performance of George Russell. Despite the fact that on Sunday they could not round off the play, they garnered a double podium together with Lewis Hamilton that tasted like glory after all the suffering at the start of the 2022 Formula 1 course.
With the expectation of repeating the result or, at least, being close, the silver arrows ran into the harsh reality of an uncompetitive W13 that was even behind the Alpine in the standings. However, the sanction against Esteban Ocon will allow the German team to start fourth and fifth, just behind Fernando Alonso, although a world behind Red Bull and Ferrari.
The seven-time world champion from the Brackley team was quite critical of the result and the gap with respect to the best: “Everyone works to improve and we came here very optimistic, thinking that we were going to be close, half a second, who knows”.
“Being 1.8 seconds away is a real kick in the teeth,” said the Englishman. “It is what it is, a car that we continue to struggle with and [I] won’t miss it at the end of the year. For me, we need to focus on how to build and design next season’s car.”
“The teams ahead of us are in another league and our car is very different from theirs, so we have a lot of work to do, but we will do the best we can with what we have for the rest of the campaign,” added Lewis Hamilton.
Regarding his qualifying session, the Briton said that it was not so much the conditions or his ability that weighed him down, but rather he hit his car again: “It was very easy [qualifying], but not very fast. No I would say that I had problems with the tyres, but the car was not very fast”.
“I think it’s the car,” he replied when asked for a reason. “We have tried everything, I have put and removed things, I have changed wings, the set-up, I have done everything this weekend. I have tried a lot, and it is surprising to see us [so far], maybe they have advanced, no I know if they have improvements or not, but it is difficult”.
“I never thought I’d be two seconds away. It’s much, much worse than I thought,” he said when asked if he ever expected to go through that moment. “I don’t want to use the word disappointing because we have to remember that there are 2,000 people in the factory who are working very hard to get it right.”
“Of course, I would like us to do well and buy upgrades that make us move forward. I also want us to be fighting at the front, but it is what it is and it hurts, acknowledged the seven-time world champion. “Believe me it hurts, but at this point you have to laugh and say that you are not fighting for a championship”.
“If I get too serious and lower the level, I have a responsibility to try to keep morale up, as we have to keep pushing, we can’t get discouraged. Yeah, it sucks and it’s slow,” exclaimed Hamilton.
On whether he would give any advice to Mercedes , he replied: “There’s not much to do… we can’t do anything overnight or change anything fast, so the only thing we can do is work with what we have.”
“We don’t know how fast or how slow we are going to be tomorrow,” he continued. “It will be a surprise, if we are closer than we think or not. It is the biggest difference we have had in qualifying.”
“What we do is talk about the meetings that we will have next week, the next steps that we will take and where we want to be with next year’s car,” said Lewis Hamilton, who clarified that he is now only focused on 2023. “That’s my only goal now.”
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