George Russell (Mercedes/5th): “I haven’t looked at it in detail”

Ferrari has set the pace so far at the Hungaroring, with Lando Norris in the McLaren and Max Verstappen in the Red Bull Racing car close behind. Where is Mercedes?

George Russell finished a lacklustre fifth in both Friday practice sessions; Kimi Antonelli made way for Danish reserve driver Frederik Vesti in the first 60 minutes of practice, whilst in the second session the Italian was unable to set a fast lap for various reasons and finished only in P11.

In Belgium, Russell’s race car suffered from an apparently inexplicable lack of speed. Mercedes suspects a software issue.

So what now? Russell, currently third in the World Championship, says: “To be honest, I haven’t looked into it all in detail because I trust the team to sort everything out.”

“Even if we had exactly the same problem as in Belgium, the difference would probably have been only ten per cent of what we saw at Spa, simply because of the different characteristics of these two circuits. This is something completely different.”

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“The Hungaroring feels completely different to Spa, and the modern power unit is quite impressive on this circuit. Energy management is much less important; we’ve got plenty of power coming out of the corners, and the rear tyres are under a lot of strain over the course of a lap.”

“We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us as a team, and to be honest, for both Kimi and me, the car was anything but great on Friday. We’ve got plenty of room for improvement. It was very windy and gusty, and the wind is set to change direction from Friday to Saturday – we need to manage to optimise the set-up and adapt perfectly to the new conditions.”