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Lewis Hamilton has pointed to the gains made by Mercedes in high-speed corners as a big step since 2019 after outpacing Max Verstappen by 1.4s at a circuit where he admitted he expected Red Bull to be a bigger threat.
The battle for pole position was solely between the Mercedes drivers, with Lewis Hamilton shading Valtteri Bottas by 0.107s, while Verstappen was only seventh as Racing Point led the challengers in third and fourth place.
When the Mercedes drivers were asked whether they were shocked by the advantage over Red Bull and informed that the advantage was 1.4s, Bottas said it was “very surprising”, while Hamilton said he was expecting Red Bull to be much stronger.
“I didn’t know that was the case, but that is a big gap,” said Hamilton when asked by The Race about the 1.4s gap to Red Bull.
“I definitely wasn’t expecting them to be as off as they have been this weekend because we saw the pace of them last year. This is not a power circuit, this is more about the car and mechanical grip and aero package.
“I thought that they had a better package than I guess today’s results showed. But I don’t know if that will had great laps or not but, either way that’s a big, big gap.”
Hamilton pointed to the improved performance of the car in the faster corners at the Hungaroring as indicative of the gains Mercedes has made since last year.
His pole position time was 1.143s faster than the quickest Mercedes time from qualifying for last year’s race and Hamilton described the fact that the fact he could take the Turn 11 right-hander close to flat out was “insane”.
While the Hungaroring is regarded as a slow circuit, it also features plenty of corners where modern F1 cars can carry significant speed and Hamilton also talked up the pace of the car in the Turn 8/9 left/right that follows the chicane, as well as the Turn 4 left-hander.
“The high speed particularly is quite a lot of different, so Turn 4, Turn 8 and 9 and then particularly Turn 11,” said Hamilton when asked about the difference between the Mercedes W10 and this year’s W11.
“But it’s a little bit everywhere I would say. The efficiency of the cars through the low and medium speed corners is definitely better than last year.
“But the high speed, particularly, as I say, you can nearly take it [turn 11] flat when before it was a full lift.”
Hamilton paid tribute to the efforts of the teams and the quality of the collaboration between drivers and engineers both at track and the factory to ensure that the car continually improves.
He said he had a great deal of confidence in the team now he’s in his eighth season with Mercedes.
“Ultimately, it is an evolution of last year’s car, so without doubt it is a better car than last year,” said Hamilton.
“We go through a whole season and during the season, Valtteri and I work closely together to point out the issues and the limitations with these cars and we work closely with our engineers to advance it and with the designers.
“We have quite a lot of meetings back in the factor together to make sure that we leave no stone unturned.
“There’s no big-headedness or ignorance between any of the engineers and between us there’s just a real transparent discussion, and no idea’s too big all bold so we just continuously push that.
“We continue to inspire each other and then the guys back in the factory are hungry, they want to continue to raise the bar and they are the best at what they do.
“So it’s impressive to see each year, this incredible amount of confidence that I have in them naturally and from these years.
“We go from strength to strength as our relationship grows as our understanding of each other, and how we all work continues to improve.”
