© Jiri Krenek for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
By Carol M. Creasey
After another upgrade at Silverstone, Lewis Hamilton was delighted to get onto the podium in third place.
However, Hungary is a place where he had won so many times in the past, with eight wins and eight poles to his name. But this was during the time when Mercedes were able to offer him a competitive car. He knew that this year it would be more difficult.
During Hungarian Grand Prix FP1&2 the performance of the car for both Mercedes drivers was underwhelming, but the team is very good at dialling their car into the right setup window, and by third practice, Lewis was able to top the timing sheets, and George Russell was fifth.
Lewis went into qualifying hoping he could make it nearer to the front row of the grid. Russell was unfortunate due to timing and other cars, so he was unable to complete a lap fast enough to get out of Q1, and ended up in eighteenth position. Lewis fought his way through to Q3, and with a stunning lap beat out Verstappen by just three thousandths of a second, to claim his 104th pole position. He was so emotional in the car straight afterwards, that he was actually lost for words, and was captured by the camera wiping tears from his eyes.
As it has now been eighteen months since Lewis lost his eighth championship due to Safety Car rules being broken, and since he had a car capable of challenging for top spots, one can only imagine just how much that pole must have meant to him. Sir Lewis has never lost faith in his team, and continues to work with and inspire his engineers to understand the car. He is now optimistic that progress is being made, and both he and Mercedes have invited fans to follow them on their journey back to winning ways.
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At the start of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Lewis had slight wheel spin, as did Verstappen, and they raced wheel to wheel, but then Max ran Lewis wide, and this allowed both McLarens to get ahead of him. Unfortunately, the Mercedes lacked performance on high fuel loads, and there was fear of overheating, so the team asked Lewis and George to lift and coast for a while.
After the second pit stop, the pace improved, and then Lewis attacked Piastri and succeeded in overtaking him. Perez then worked his way up from ninth and passed Lewis, but as the race progressed, the Briton started to catch him again. By the end of the race Lewis was just one and a half seconds behind Perez. Russell worked his way up to seventh, which became sixth, when Leclerc received a five-second penalty.
Verstappen won the race, Norris was second, and Perez third, with Lewis fourth. Lewis was very disappointed not to make the podium, but he is content in the knowledge that his car has improved for qualifying, and hails it as a step in the right direction. We will now see how the Mercedes will perform at the Belgian Grand Prix, after another significant upgrade that was introduced at Spa.
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