Hamilton blames faulty DRS as pole chance goes begging

Ewan Gale
Saturday 30 July 2022 17:50 - Updated: 10:58

Lewis Hamilton has revealed his frustration at a DRS issue that took away his chance to fight team-mate George Russell for Hungarian Grand Prix pole.

Russell claimed a maiden F1 pole with a stunning lap to beat Carlos Sainz and Ferrari at the Hungaroring as Mercedes finally entered the fight with the Scuderia and Red Bull.

But whilst Hamilton led a Mercedes one-two at the end of Q1, a fault cost him the chance to improve with his final effort in the top-10 shootout, eventually finishing seventh behind Lando Norris' McLaren and both Alpines.

"I had a DRS not working," explained Hamilton.

"But otherwise, huge congratulations to George. It is an amazing feeling to get your first pole position, and it is huge for us as a team.

"We don't know where our pace all of a sudden came from, it came from nowhere and that is a huge positive.

"I will do what I can to support him, we should be able to win from that position on this track and I will try to work my way up.

"I don't know where our race pace is going to be because [in practice] we were slow in both [one-lap and race] but maybe all of a sudden we have found something."

Asked if he believed Mercedes could have taken a one-two on the grid, Hamilton replied: "For sure.

"It is definitely frustrating after all the trouble we have had, to finally be able to fight for the front row and not be able to do it but there will be other times."

Mercedes "night-and-day different" to Friday

Mercedes director of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin had suggested the team would need to undo experiments made in Friday practice after both Hamilton and Russell struggled throughout.

With the steps made, Hamilton insisted: "The car is night-and-day different.

"We did a lot of work overnight, the guys back at the factory did a lot of work on the sim.

"We didn't get to feel it in FP3 [due to wet weather] but in quali it was feeling racy."

Additional reporting by Ian Parkes