Mercedes returned from the summer holidays with the aim of confirming the step forward that the W13 had shown in recent events, but the first obstacle was found in the first race after the break, at Spa-Francorchamps, where Hamilton was left behind. of a second from Max Verstappen’s pole and in the race George Russell fought for the podium, but he didn’t get it either.
Just five days later and hoping to forget what happened at the 2022 Formula 1 Belgian Grand Prix, the Brackley team’s single-seaters left very good feelings on Friday and faced qualifying with great optimism.
The Mercedes remained close to the top positions in both Q1 and Q2, but they were fully aware that the most difficult thing would be to fight face to face with Ferrari and Red Bull in the last and final Q3, something they achieved despite that finally could not be reflected in the final results of the qualifying session.
Hamilton finished fourth three tenths off Verstappen ‘s pole, while Russell was unable to get past sixth to eight tenths off the Dutch driver. However, these differences, which on paper are considerable, could have been much lower had it not been for Sergio Pérez’s spin towards the end of Q3.
The director of the Mercedes team in F1, Toto Wolff , revealed that according to his internal data, Hamilton was improving Verstappen ‘s times at the time of the Mexican driver’s spin, who minutes before also received complaints from Fernando Alonso for having harmed him in his attempt. end of Q2.
“In our own data that comes to us through our cars and that we look at a lot, we were actually a tenth ahead of [Verstappen] before the incident,” Wolff said.
“Now it’s true that we don’t know how we would have finished. But I really think we were in the mix to fight for pole position. And that’s good news,” he added.
Despite the great step forward that comes from having gone from finishing one second from pole to firmly believing that they had a chance of getting first place on a Saturday for the first time so far in the 2022 Formula 1 season, Mercedes is not satisfied.
“We want more. And I think we could have been there or at least very close to it,” German team principal Toto Wolff said in closing.
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