Hamilton Identifies Core Issue Behind Mercedes's Poor Qualifying Performance

Saturday, 20 July 2024 at 22:00

Lewis Hamilton identified the main cause behind Mercedes's fall in performance throughout the qualifying session in Hungary.

Seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton qualified in P5 for the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix. While this was much better than his teammate George Russel's knockout from Q1, it was worse than the German team was hoping for after two Grand Prix wins.

Starting from P5, Hamilton could still put his Mercedes on the podium or even win the race. However, Mercedes lacked quite a bit of pace on McLaren and Red Bull at the end of qualifying, and it isn't clear whether that could change going into the race.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after Saturday's qualifying session at the Hungaroring, the 39-year-old Mercedes driver said:

"We came to try and be at the front. You can never be satisfied. I think we did an okay job. We've done everything we could. We got the car in a relatively decent place but when it gets hot, we're just not particularly fast."

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Mercedes has historically performed worse in hotter conditions and that was something that even Red Bull's Helmut Marko pointed out ahead of the weekend in Budapest, which tends to be one of the hottest in the season.

Asked whether these increasing temperatures and overall hot conditions could be the cause for Mercedes's struggles, the seven-time World Champion responded:

"Yeah, when the session started, obviously, it was much cooler and we were rapid. Then, as soon as the temperature picked up, others got faster, and we got slower, or we didn't get any faster, at least."

In the end, Hamilton's fastest lap was 0,627 seconds slower than the fastest time set by McLaren driver Lando Norris. The Mercedes driver will start the race from the third row on the grid, sandwiched between two Ferrari drivers, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, in P4 and P6.