Mercedes 1-2 in Hungary F1 qualifying was on before DRS failure

The seven-time F1 world champion believed he could match team-mate George Russell’s surprise pole laptime in Q3, but suffered a broken DRS on his final lap, leaving him unable to improve late on.

Having to rely on his laptime from the first run in the top-10 qualifying shootout, Hamilton dropped to seventh place and conceded it was frustrating to lose out on the opportunity having seen Russell take his maiden F1 pole.

“Huge congratulations to George it is an amazing feeling to get your first pole position and it is huge for us also as a team,” Hamilton said.

“We don’t know where our pace all of sudden came from, it came from nowhere, so that is a huge positive.

“I’ll do what I can tomorrow to support him and he should be able to win from that position at this track and I’ll try to work my way up.”

When asked if he thought a 1-2 in qualifying was possible for Mercedes, he said: “For sure, so it is definitely frustrating to finally, after all the struggle we’ve had, to not be able to fight for the front row and not be able to do it but there will be other times.”

Hamilton also admitted he didn’t understand the transformation in pace by Mercedes, after feeling it was “crazy” how much his F1 car swings in performance at each track.

“I don’t know how or where our race pace is going to be now,” he said.

“Yesterday we were slow but maybe all of a sudden we’ve found something, so if we have then great, and if that is for both of us then hopefully we can really attack tomorrow.

“The car was night and day different, we did a lot of work overnight and the guys back at the factory did a lot of the work in the sim and we didn’t obviously get to feel it in FP3 but in quali it was feeling racy.”