The Mercedes team has lived through a nightmare in the first half of the 2022 Formula 1 season after dominating in each and every campaign since the start of the hybrid era at the Grand Circus. After eight consecutive constructors’ world titles, expectations with the change in technical regulations were very high, and everyone at Brackley was confident of staying at the top of the standings.
However, from the beginning of the winter tests, the German team suffered with its revolutionary W13 with the pontoons reduced to the maximum, a very risky concept that did not pay dividends until qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, when they got the first pole position off the course of a team other than Ferrari or Red Bull.
George Russell was the absolute protagonist of the session that decided the starting positions for Sunday’s race at the Hungaroring, as the young Englishman became the 105th driver to achieve first place in Formula 1 thanks to a spectacular lap in the final round of the session. That caught everyone by surprise, including the team itself, which assured that taking pole position was not part of its plans, even more so when in the last round in France they climbed on the podium due to the errors of the rest.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff spoke after celebrating what one of his Formula 1 protégés had achieved, confirming what his drivers were saying about not explaining how they went from suffering on the track to being the fastest.
“I have no explanation,” he said. “I think what I told [Andrew] Shov to write down everything he’s done today since this morning, including eating, to explain why we’re doing so well.”
“To be honest, this season we have moved between depression and joy, and sometimes it changed from one day to the next. Yesterday we tried things that didn’t work at all, but they gave us a little more idea for today,” explained the Austrian. “This year is a bit of a pain. And today is one of the days where we have really unlocked some potential in the car.”
“This is what makes this sport so difficult and special, you need to continue to develop to be wrong and right,” he said into the DAZN F1 microphones. “It was like trial and error, yesterday the car was so bad that we were aware that we had to change direction and turn everything around.”
“This season we’ve done some unconventional things. I remember having a talk with a very smart worker about aerodynamics, and she reminded me that if you had told me last year that we were going to put a floor on the car without testing it in the wind tunnel, It would be impossible,” Wolff revealed. “We did it, and everyone was proud of the results.”
“It’s not that we don’t have a clue why the car has been fast, but what I’m saying is that we’ve had a number of ideas to pursue during the season where we thought the potential would be unleashed, and it wasn’t,” he said. Mercedes boss. “So here we have another direction, and that was fast enough for the stopwatch, but I don’t want to have another false dawn.”
“When you start from pole position you have to try to win, but you don’t have to dream. Our car was very far from the first position, and also from winning, so I hope we can fight for that victory,” he said when he was put on the table the possibility of celebrating from the top of the podium on Sunday.
His pair of drivers had mixed luck in qualifying at the Hungaroring, and while George Russell was on the front page after taking pole position, Lewis Hamilton had to settle for seventh place after a failure with his DRS in Q3.
“The frustration for Lewis [Hamilton] is very big, because it is the first time that the car is fast enough to fight for pole position, and his DRS got stuck,” said the Silver Arrows director. “There can’t be a worse moment after having suffered so much all year to have a fast car and that your team-mate, who I have no doubt he thinks deserves to be on pole, is right there.
On the great protagonist of the day on Saturday, the author of the pole, Toto Wolff said: “This is the first pole position for George [Russell], and that will always be something special for him and for us, because it is a moment for to remember”.
“He had these extraordinary performances in the lower categories, and he had it at Spa-Francorchamps last year in the rain. Today is one more milestone of many that he is going to achieve,” said the Austrian when asked if it was the best session that he remembered from the British.
“George is a champion in the making, and he was in all the lower categories, in F3 and F2 as a rookie. We would never have put him in a Mercedes if we didn’t believe he could be the future world champion.”
