The theme of Friday at the Hungaroring is that of the tyres, protagonists for better or for worse of an atypical day, conditioned both by the rain in FP1 and by the particular experimental format in the afternoon. In fact, with two less sets of tires available for each driver, several teams have decided to follow a different program from that of their rivals, focusing on finding balance or consuming as few trains as possible.
Among the teams that have followed a particular approach is Mercedes, who used a single set of medium tires for the whole day, with which they completed both the first and second sessions on Friday. George Russell thus managed to total twenty-one laps on the same set of yellow-banded tyres, while teammate Lewis Hamilton stopped after twenty laps.
In fact, like the two standard bearers of Alfa Romeo, the two bearers of the star were the only ones who did not use any set of soft tyres, thus remaining distant from the search for a single lap time. The focus of the German team, on the other hand, went to work over long distances, even if, with a set that has covered so many laps, it is difficult to make direct comparisons with the other teams.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W14
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
The seven-times world champion therefore finished in sixteenth place in the timesheets, with teammate George Russell in last position, clearly of little relevance. However, despite knowing that the team was following a different program from all the others, Hamilton gave a rather negative evaluation of the sensations of his W14.
“I didn’t have a good feeling. It looked like the car was at its worst today,” explained the Englishman, who has however already seen some radical transformations over the course of the weekend.
“But we’ll work on the set-up tonight and hope that tomorrow, like last year, when the sensations were terrible at the start, we can change with some set-up modifications. So, tonight we’ll work on this aspect. Let’s hope tomorrow goes better.”
Hamilton also expressed a critical position on the format, which he didn’t like: “I only had one set for the sessions. So it wasn’t that much of a change they made for this weekend, it just means there’s less racing, it’s not ideal. There are a lot of wet tires that I think get thrown away after the weekend, maybe they should think about something like that instead of taking track time away from the fans.”
Russell was a little more optimistic about Mercedes’ situation, being aware that his team often encountered difficult Fridays before steadily improving over the course of the weekend, so much so that they were also at stake for important results. “To be honest, it didn’t go badly. Obviously we had very different schedules than everyone else, as we only used one set of tires for the whole day. It was also a set of used tires from FP1.”
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W14
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
“So, the lap times don’t give a true representation and I’m sure tomorrow will be better. But we’re still focused on how to improve. We always know that we tend to improve as the weekend progresses, as it should be. We learned some interesting things even in just one session, so let’s see what we can do tonight.”
Russell believes the improvements must come from better tire management, both in terms of warm-up for qualifying and race handling. “We are struggling with the lack of grip in general. I don’t think the tires work in the right window, whether on low fuel or on high fuel.”
“So we have to understand why: if we have to do a faster out lap or a slower out lap for the qualifying stint, and for the race if we have to push harder or manage better. These things are sometimes a bit difficult when you’re in the cockpit, without having to look at the data to understand if the tires are colder or warmer and what they need to go a little faster”.
“As I said, it certainly wasn’t our best day. But it’s not the first time I’ve said that on a Friday night. And Saturday and Sunday were often better.”
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