Friday’s day at Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix 2022 was not the best of the season, and that is, after the morale boost that came second in France in what was a double podium for Mercedes with George Russell in third place, expectations for the Silver Arrows were high.
In the first free practice session, the seven-time champion tried to control a difficult W13, which even suffered a bit again with the rebounds, and could not go beyond seventh position, almost a second off the fastest time, Carlos Sainz.
In the afternoon, with track conditions similar to those of qualifying, despite the fact that heavy rain is expected, Hamilton was even further away from the best of the Ferraris, in this case that of Charles Leclerc, at 1.1 seconds in 11th place. For this reason, when he got out of his car, the Englishman recognized that he had had a bad time on the asphalt, and that the car he drove in Paul Ricard just a week ago was nothing like the car he drove.
“We have been suffering with the car,” he said. “It’s been crazy how it has changed so much from track to track, and we just have to keep our heads up to find out how we can get the car to work now.”
“It’s a bit lazy, and it doesn’t do what we want it to do, so yeah, a tough day,” said the seven-time world champion, explaining that nothing had been changed about the W13 compared to the last race in France.
“Nothing has changed on the car since last week. I’m the same driver this week as last week, but for some reason, on this track, it’s not working as well,” he said. “Although I think once we’ve got it right, the gap is more or less the same as last week, about a second.
The appointment in Hungary will be difficult to manage if the sun shines on Sunday due to the high degradation of the tires, an issue that Hamilton was asked about.
“I couldn’t get out at the end because I had some damage, I took it on the ground, so I lost a lot of downforce,” revealed the Briton. “After that, it was quite difficult to find the race pace with long runs.”
“It’s going to be a difficult weekend, that’s for sure, but we’ll give it our all and see what we’ve got,” said the Silver Arrows driver, who is sixth in the overall standings with 127 points, 16 points behind his teammate, George Russell.
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