Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff was left downbeat after a tough Hungarian Grand Prix weekend, where he admitted that the Silver Arrows were always playing ‘catch up’ against their ever-improving rivals.
In the end, championship leader Kimi Antonelli spared the team any blushes with a good drive to third place, while George Russell recovered from a dreadful start to finish seventh. But once again Mercedes encountered problems with their car, with Russell’s failure to get off the line not a driver error.
“As it seems, another problem that happened to George, it looks like he gave about 10% throttle and the whole thing revved maximum,” Wolff explained about the moment, which dropped Russell to P19 on the opening lap of the race.
“He went off the throttle and it popped down, so I’m really not happy about too many mistakes that happened. So that was the reason, and then he drove very well. He went through the traffic easy and then recovered, I think, the maximum points that he could have recovered.”
Russell’s issue was not the only thing that went wrong for Mercedes in Budapest. Having opted to give Antonelli’s seat to Fred Vesti in FP1, the Italian was left short of lap time from there on in.
Combined with the tricky track conditions, neither Antonelli nor Russell were able to find a set-up that could fully exploit the pace of the car.
Antonelli was still the more competitive of the duo and initially qualified fourth, but was then handed a three-place grid drop for failing to slow sufficiently under yellow flags at the end of Q3.
Russell also had issues, suffering a water leak in Qualifying that required an change of components, and it remains to be seen whether that issue can be fixed or if he has lost an engine from his pool of parts.
“I think the whole weekend we didn’t… it wasn’t great. Missing FP1 certainly was not perfect. We got the set-ups not 100% right and it was always a catch-up game that we had all weekend, and then going back yesterday in the Quali, George’s engine programme,” Wolff added.
“So, if you would have told me before the race that we can have a podium with Kimi, I would have said I’ll take it immediately. But now you’re looking back, the prevailing feeling is that we should have done better.
“We were unlucky with the VSC again, that could have been a P2 [for Antonelli]. If we would have had a fault-free week, I think we would have fought for the victory or at least two cars on the podium.
“You can’t [fault] the drivers today. Kimi’s defence on the hard against Lewis [Hamilton] on the soft was brilliant driving. And the same with George. I think he cleared 10 cars at the beginning, through the traffic, when we knew it was going to be very difficult. So, drivers today were really doing a good job.”
Mercedes have already been beaten this year, by Lewis Hamilton in Barcelona-Catalunya, and by Charles Leclerc at Silverstone. But in both races they were in the hunt for the win – which was never the case in Budapest, hence Wolff’s less than satisfied demeanour.
Nonetheless, one big positive is that Antonelli remains in the lead of the Drivers’ Championship, and despite all the difficulties in Hungary actually extended his advantage over his rivals. He has a 50-point advantage over Hamilton, and a 59-point lead over Russell.
Mercedes remain in command of the Teams’ Championship, 72-points ahead of Ferrari.
