"It’s crazy how it swings from track to track"- Lewis Hamilton blames Mercedes' car 'struggle' for poor show at 2022 F1 Hungarian GP practice

Lewis Hamilton looked all at sea on the track in Hungary. The unimpressive times on the timesheets showed Mercedes' extensive struggles with the high downforce layout.

It looked like the team was closer to the midfield, even well-entrenched in it, rather than fighting with the front runners Ferrari and Red Bull. Things got even worse when Hamilton could not even set a time capable enough of a top 10 slot in FP2, finishing the session in 11th.

Speaking to the media afterward, Lewis Hamilton admitted that the car had been a handful to drive on Friday. He said:

“The car was a struggle today, it’s crazy how it swings from track to track and tonight we’ll be working on setup to try and get the car working. At the moment, it’s a little loose and not doing what we want it to do. Not much has changed since last week, I’m still the same driver! But for some reason at this track, the car isn’t working as well.”

“In the glimpses where it was working, we were still down a second which was actually similar to last week. I didn’t get much chance of a long run at the end because I sustained some damage to my floor and lost a lot of downforce. It’s going to be a tough weekend, but we’ll give it everything.”

According to Mercedes engineer Andrew Shovlin, the team had applied a few experiments to the car that didn't work and hence would revert to the old setting for Saturday. He said:

“The morning session was reasonable but we’d made some changes going into the afternoon on both cars that look to have taken us in the wrong direction. That’s easy enough to undo for tomorrow, and it looks like we are going to get some rain so hopefully we can recover the situation but other than finding out what not to do, the afternoon wasn’t a lot of use.”

“To further add to matters, Lewis [Hamilton] picked up some damage on his low fuel run which we couldn’t repair in time so by the end of the session, the car was very difficult and very inconsistent. The weather for the rest of the weekend looks like a wet day tomorrow followed by a dry race but in cooler conditions than we had today.”

Shovlin reiterated Lewis Hamilton on the importance of qualifying at the Hungaroring and wanted to ensure the team did not slip up on Saturday. He added, saying:

“Whilst we’re disappointed with the pace in the afternoon, we’ve hopefully picked up some useful learning over the day. We’ve got a busy night ahead in the garage and the engineering office to make sure we can gather up the situation for tomorrow. Qualifying is more important here than at most tracks so that’s our focus; we know the car works well when it’s in the right window so that’s what we’ll be trying to achieve.”

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Lewis Hamilton's teammate did not have the smoothest day either

Lewis Hamilton's teammate George Russell did not have the best day either. The young Mercedes driver finished the day 8th in FP2, not an ideal result for the team in any way. Speaking to the media after the race, Russell said:

“It definitely hasn’t been our smoothest Friday this season, a bit of a strange one because we think it’s going to be wet for qualifying tomorrow and then different again on Sunday. We tried quite a few things with the car and used today as a test session so while it’s been a tough day, it’s probably been a productive one.”

It will be interesting to see how Lewis Hamilton and the team can bounce back from a rough first day as qualifying will be crucial this weekend.