Mercedes suffered a disappointing qualifying on Saturday at the Hungarian Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton qualifying fifth and George Russell out in Q1, and starting 17th on the grid.
After the session, team boss Toto Wolff said it was a “total underperformance from literally everybody involved here.”
Lewis Hamilton has a record 104 Formula One pole positions and Hungary, a circuit where he has had a record nine career poles, marked a year since the seven-time world champion last qualified fastest.
Hamilton returned to the top of the podium at Silverstone on July 7 — his first win since 2021 — but the 39-year-old has outqualified teammate George Russell only three times so far in 2024.
“We came to try and be at the front and you can never be satisfied,” Hamilton said. “If we had optimised everything, we could have likely gone one tenth or two quicker, but we didn’t have enough to challenge for pole position today.”
Hamilton’s most recent pole was in Hungary on July 22 last year and it remains his only one since 2021. The next chance for the sport’s most successful driver will be in Belgium next weekend.
Russell has had two poles and a win so far this season.
“Lewis hasn’t disguised the fact that Saturdays are his tough day,” Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes trackside engineering director told reporters at the Hungaroring on Friday.
“He’s struggled with this whole generation of car, really, not suiting his style. He’s been working on how he drives.”
Shovlin added there were “fairly fine margins” between Russell and Hamilton, whose confidence in the car was coming back in his last season before joining Ferrari in 2025.
“We’ll keep working on that. And I’m sure that we’ll see hopefully some more Lewis pole positions as well,” Shovlin said, who explained that Hamilton’s long run pace had never been in question.
“Most of our work has been trying to give him a car that you can drive in an attacking style, extract the lap time out of it without it just sort of breaking away on the way in and catching him by surprise,” Shovlin said.
Information from Reuters contributed to this report.
Source: www.espn.com