© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Lewis Hamilton says he expects the field to be “a lot closer” than it seems after Hungarian Grand Prix first and second free practice session.
Mercedes dominated today’s dry FP1 session with a fastest time set on hard tyres. The third car on the grid was Racing Point’s Sergio Perez who set a time on the soft compound. In FP2 it started to rain heavily, so Hamilton opted not to run, while Valtteri Bottas posted the second best time of the session (behind Sebastian Vettel).
Despite seemingly crushing the competition during the dry session, Hamilton doesn’t think Mercedes will have the same advantage during tomorrow’s qualifying.
“I don’t take too much from it,” said the Briton.
“Everyone is doing something different, a different programme out there in terms of wing and fuel and engine and all these kind of things. We got through what we needed to get through. It was going OK.
“I think it’s going to be a lot closer when we get to P3 and qualifying, but yeah, the car, there was some work to do to it, so we did some work.
“Then it rained, and we won’t know until we get another dry session.”
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The forecast for Saturday says there could be rain during qualifying, so everyone is asking if Lewis will be able to produce another amazing wet lap, like he did at the Styrian Grand Prix quali.
“No car is perfect, and no driver is perfect – what we do is just try to continue to build on that solid foundation that we have.
“It is a great car, but we still are learning about it. We’re still trying to understand the small nuances and the changes we can make to just continue to build.
“It was great in the rain in Austria. It’s a little bit different here, it’s higher downforce, but the track seems to be a lot slipperier.
“If it is a wet qualifying, it’s not going to be like last week. However, who knows? Maybe I’ll do a decent job again. We’ll see.“
Source: autosport.com
