On the back of Ferrari’s strongest Friday – and Red Bull’s weakest – for many months in Hungary, cynical observers questioned just how Ferrari would manage to end up being beaten to pole position on Saturday.
As it turned out, those expectations were well founded. But it was not Max Verstappen who denied Carlos Sainz Jnr and Charles Leclerc pole position at the Hungaroring and nor was it Sergio Perez. It was not even the man with the most poles in the history of Formula 1 – Lewis Hamilton.
Instead, Ferrari were stunned by George Russell, who delivered a fantastic final lap to deny Sainz and take a shock maiden pole position of his career, despite not setting a single fastest sector in the process. For Mercedes, it was a stunning turnaround from their poor Friday – and no one was more stunned than the team themselves.
“It’s a total unknown,” Russell admitted. “We’ve turned the car upside down since yesterday.”
Before qualifying, all signs had pointed to the tight Hungaroring and the cool conditions compounding the W13’s weaknesses. But what had Mercedes actually done to their car, RaceFans asked the pole winner, to bring out this bizzarro-W13 that had provided them pole position where they should have least expected it?
“Well, we made a big step forward – so I’m not going to tell you about that!,” Russell
“In Formula 1, it’s [about] fine margins and there’s so many fine margins and so many different aspects and when you get everything into that perfect window, the car can just fly. Equally, if one thing is just out, it can compromise everything.”
Mercedes getting into that “perfect window” would have been more obvious had Lewis Hamilton not been compromised by a DRS fault on his final run, likely preventing him from ending up a lot closer to his team mate than the seventh place he will start Sunday’s race from.
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“My DRS stopped working, which was frustrating after all the struggle we had to finally have the chance to fight for front row but then not being able to, because of the issues with the DRS,” Hamilton said. “We don’t know where our pace all of a sudden just came from. It came from nowhere.”
Having looked so strong over single lap and long runs on Friday, Ferrari were not hiding their disappointment at missing out on locking out…
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