George Russell said Mercedes expects totally different conditions for qualifying and racing at the Hungaroring
What will become of Mercedes on the Hungarian GP weekend? Free practice this Friday (29) indicated for the Anglo-German team that reality is a bit more complicated than imagined until yesterday, according to George Russell. Mercedes is far behind Red Bull and Ferrari, but at least expect Saturday and Sunday with very different track conditions.
If the first two practice sessions took place with ambient temperatures of up to 33°C and with asphalt reaching 55°C, the expectation for Saturday is rain during qualifying. For Sunday, cloudy weather, without today's sun, and with a much milder temperature. It is a conjuncture that, for Russell, transformed Friday into a kind of test.
"It definitely wasn't our smoothest Friday so far, and everything was kind of weird, because we expect wet track for tomorrow's qualifying," he said. Russell finished TL2 in eighth place and saw Lewis Hamilton 11th.
"The conditions on Sunday will be drastically different, so we tested a lot of things with the car and really used it as a test session, to be honest. We tried to maximize everything that was done today, but it's not going to have any use for the rest of the weekend," he said.
"So in this way, even a very difficult day ends up being productive. We are certainly further behind than we expected and we had some problems here and there, but I think tomorrow will be different, as well as Sunday. All is not lost," he finished.
GRANDE PRÊMIO follows LIVE and IN REAL TIME all the activities of the Hungarian GP weekend. On Saturday, TL3 is scheduled for 8am (GMT-3), while qualifying starts at 11am.