Lewis Hamilton: The start was certainly not a success

The Hungarian leg of the championship for Mercedes was not very successful, despite the car enabling Lewis Hamilton to win qualifying the day before and George Russell regaining many positions after starting from the penultimate row.

Lewis Hamilton (4th): “Although the initial phase of the start wasn’t the worst, but of course it didn’t work out as well as Max Verstappen. The drive wheels slipped a bit, after which Max, who was on the inner lane, forced me to the side of the road, and both McLarens got ahead of me.

Overall, the start was certainly not successful and somehow reminded me of the start of the 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix when I rolled back, although I started the race from pole position.

Then I just didn’t have enough pace to keep up with the leaders. The balance of the car on the first segment would also be very poor, there was a lot of understeer, and as the corner progressed that turned into oversteer, and the rear wheels of the W14 started to break off the track.

But gradually we somehow adapted, in the next two segments the controllability of the car improved significantly. If we could have passed circles earlier at the same pace as at the end of the race, I think we could have counted on a better result.

But I intend to capitalize on the positive experience we had yesterday. The team made an incredible effort to ensure that we started from pole at the end of qualifying, for everyone, and for us it was a really remarkable achievement.

George Russell (6th): “Sixth place is beyond all expectations. Before the race, our strategists’ prediction was as follows: 11th place, or at best 7th, if everything goes perfectly. But we finished sixth for both Ferrari drivers, although they started well ahead of us.

I could go very fast with the car. The Hungaroring is one of my favorite circuits and our team usually performs well in this Grand Prix.

The speed of the car didn’t come as a surprise to me, so it’s just a shame we couldn’t perform at Lewis’ level yesterday. After all, if both cars start from the front two rows, it completely changes the nature of the race. Although we missed this opportunity, we still earned points and held onto 2nd place in the Constructors’ Championship, so we accept this result.

It looks like the McLaren is a little faster than us now, but it’s more about Lando Norris, he’s doing a great job. But Oscar Piastri also makes a good impression, because although he is a beginner, he hardly makes any mistakes. At some point, he will rise to the level of a partner. And when that happens, they become a real threat.

I think that while our advantage is big enough, we can stay ahead of McLaren until the end of the season.

Toto Wolff, team leader: “I think our car was second fastest today. Such a conclusion is obvious when you look at the results of passing circles, and also when you consider how many positions George played. However, we couldn’t take full advantage of the W14’s speed capabilities.

Nevertheless, we see how Max Verstappen goes through the circles, with what composure he does so. We are still a long way from it, but we must strive for it.

Of course a bad start played a role, but that happens sometimes. Maybe it’s also because we were trying to save the tyres, so we were too careful. I think in the end Lewis lost less than two seconds to Perez and about five seconds to Lando, overall we fell a little short for the podium.

I think if we built the race a little bit differently we could win back this deficit. Now we need to analyze everything in order to understand how it was possible to trade.