Lewis Hamilton was shocked to see Red Bull lose its DRS advantage after the Hungarian GP qualifying triumph
Hamilton's pole position might just be the beginning of Red Bull's decline.
Lewis Hamilton (Credits: Deccan Herald)
Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton attained a remarkable 104th career pole position in Hungary on Saturday. The British driver beat Max Verstappen by a small margin of three-thousandths a second, who finished ahead of McLaren’s Lando Norris. Following the qualifying, Hamilton shared his thoughts on Red Bull’s small decline.
Verstappen’s time was almost beaten in the last two qualifying races. Charles Leclerc fell behind by 0.048 seconds in Austria, while Norris fell behind by 0.241 seconds in Silverstone. Hamilton has taken note of these shortcomings and has questioned Red Bull’s DRS advantage that they had at the start of the season.
“Obviously I think they’ve slowed down quite a bit, from the beginning of the year. I mean, just looking at the DRS, they don’t have the DRS advantage, all of a sudden, that they used to have; where did that go?,” Hamilton told the media.
While he admitted that Red Bull is still the quickest in the race, Lewis Hamilton is still eager to see their further decline. After Red Bull’s upgrades, they were expected to be faster by two-tenths, but they failed to show these results in qualifying.
“It’ll be very hard to beat them tomorrow. We were just as surprised as everybody else, definitely interesting to see some of the deficits and how it’s changed from race to race and how it’s closed,” he added.
In case you missed it: Toto Wolff blames himself and the Mercedes crew for George Russell’s horrendous Hungarian GP qualifying
Lewis Hamilton was astonished by his result in qualifying for Hungary
Amidst the new upgrades by McLaren and Red Bull, it was Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton who managed to bag the pole position for the Hungarian GP on Saturday. Hamilton was overjoyed after qualifying, saying he couldn’t remember when he was last in pole position (Saudi Arabia-2021).
Hamilton said that Mercedes did not come into the weekend with any upgrades. The car didn’t resonate with him in the practice session as, well. But overnight work on the car paid off for him. He added that Hungaroring is one of the tracks he can connect more naturally.
“We were not expecting that coming into the weekend. We didn’t have an upgrade or anything like that.. They[rival teams] seemed too far ahead for us but as we started going through the qualy session… I nearly didn’t get through Q1, and then things just got better and better,” said Hamilton.
Hamilton’s nothing to lose attitude has managed to get him the pole position for today’s race. It remains to be seen whether he can secure a victory today to make it 104 career wins for him
Discover More:
- Daniel Ricciardo calls Hungarian GP qualifying outing as ‘irrelevant’ despite finishing ahead of Yuki Tsunoda
- “I never seen a driver like that,” Yuki Tsunoda shockingly compares recently sacked Nyck De Vries with a 3 time F1 world champion
Justin P Joy
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