Mercedes questions Red Bull Hungarian GP strategy

Verstappen jumps out of RB16B. — Photo: © LAT Images

Hungarian Grand Prix

11 reacties

Mercedes question Red Bull Hungarian GP strategy

Mercedes shocked Red Bull with its pace advantage in qualifying

Ian Parkes & Ewan Gale

Wednesday 4 August 2021 05:00

Mercedes has revealed to being surprised by the pace advantage it held over F1 title rivals Red Bull over the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend.

Red Bull was the favourite for the event given the high-downforce nature of the Hungaroring and its previous dominance on twisting circuits this year.

But in qualifying it was a Mercedes front-row lockout as Lewis Hamilton finished half-a-second faster than third-placed Max Verstappen, although a pace comparison in the race was impossible due to the effects of the turn one meleé triggered by Valtteri Bottas.

Article continues under video

Asked if the team was surprised by its advantage, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin questioned Red Bull's decision making.

"We thought that this was a circuit that should suit them," insisted Shovlin.

"The other thing that always worries us when we come to a max-downforce circuit is we are frequently running around on our max-downforce wing and then they bring it out for the Monacos and this place but maybe they couldn't balance that.

"They went away from it on Saturday and for us, it seems odd that you would ever run anything other than your biggest rear wing here.

"We don't profess to know why they are taking decisions on that car but it could be that they were just struggling to get enough front end on the big wing and they dropped down to the smaller one."

Mercedes update providing "useful performance"

Mercedes last major update of the season was added to the W12 at Silverstone, yielding instant results - albeit in controversial circumstances.

In Hungary, it was clear the upgrades worked well but Shovlin explained the team will need to take time to understand why.

"That is something we need to look at the next few days," he added.

"We are down to pretty small developments now, to be honest, but we did have the update kit in Silverstone and that does look like it has given us some useful performance.

"But then the car was working well here in terms of where it was maintaining the tyre temperatures and we had quite a nice balance with it.

"To be honest, we are surprised by it ourselves. A pleasant surprise but we were surprised to have that margin to pole, for instance."