2023 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix highlights

Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team

Lewis Hamilton finished fourth, and George Russell sixth in the 2023 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix.

That result sees the Team extend the gap over third in the Constructors’ Championship to 39 points ahead of the final race before the summer break.

Lewis Hamilton

My initial getaway wasn’t the worst I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t as good as the others. I ran wide and also got done by the McLarens. After that, I didn’t have the pace to keep up with those ahead. The balance of the car didn’t feel great in the first stint, and I had a lot of understeer, snap oversteer, and problems with through-corner balance. As the stints progressed, the car started to become more driveable, and the final stint was much better. The pace we had at the end was very strong, and if we had had that throughout, we would have had a much better day.

Nevertheless, I’m going to take the positives from this weekend. It was an amazing effort from the Team to take pole position. We still have a lot of work to do to beat Red Bull in a Grand Prix, but we will keep pushing.

George Russell

P6 was beyond our expectations for today. It was definitely a good recovery. We thought we would be P11 in a typical race and P7 if we maximised everything. I’m happy with how it went. The car was really quick, and this place is one of my favourite circuits. As a Team, we usually go well here, so I had a feeling we would be quick.

Of course, it is disappointing as we didn’t deliver yesterday. We could have been right up there, and if we had two cars up front, the dynamic changed completely. Nevertheless, we’ve extended the gap over P3 in the Constructors’ Championship, so we will take it. There are a lot of positives to come out of this weekend, and we have learned a lot. We will go again at Spa next week.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO

I think we had the second-quickest car today, but the result doesn’t show it. If you look at the lap time profile and George’s progress, there was an opportunity for more, but we didn’t monetise it. That is obviously disappointing. In the final stint, Lewis reeled in over 10 seconds to those ahead, and we finished just 1.5 seconds shy of the podium. I think if we had executed our race slightly differently, we would have had that margin. We need to analyse and see what we could have done.

We were far off a pole position at the start of the year and started to comprehend the car more. Having said that, Max looked tranquil up front, and we’re not here to race for second-best. Getting to the front is the objective, and of course, that was far off today.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Starting from P1 and not even making the podium is always going to be disappointing. We never believed we had the pace to beat Verstappen, but we could have been second had more gone our way. The opening lap wasn’t great for Lewis, dropping to fourth, but our pace seemed to get better as the race went on. It looked like we’d be a distant fourth at one point, but he did a good job closing Perez and Norris down in the final stint. It was frustrating that we couldn’t get on the back of them sooner.

Our expectations with George were to make it into the points. For him to come sixth is a very good result. We were nursing engine temperatures, which cost both cars a lot of race time, as the ambient temperature was slightly higher than expected. We’ve made small gains to Ferrari and Aston Martin in the Constructors’ Championship, which is some consolation. Overall though, we leave here thinking we could have done a much better job as a Team.

Mercedes-AMG F1 Team best pictures:

2023 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, Thursday – LAT Images

2023 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, Friday – LAT Images

2023 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, Saturday – Jiri Krenek

2023 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, Saturday – Steve Etherington

2023 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, Sunday – Jiri Krenek

2023 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, Sunday – Jiri Krenek

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