Mercedes has revealed {that a} cooling miscalculation contributed to Lewis Hamilton lacking out on third place on the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Hamilton had began from pole and misplaced the lead initially, then ran in fourth till his first pit cease when he switched from medium to arduous compound tyres. Nevertheless he didn’t then push when on these tyres, significantly initially of his stint, and misplaced a number of seconds to the vehicles forward.

After his second pit cease, with 21 laps to go, Hamilton elevated his tempo. He overtook McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, however ran out of time to take third place from Crimson Bull’s Sergio Perez, who had efficiently jumped forward of the Mercedes by way of the pits. The pair had been separated by simply one-and-a-half seconds on the finish of the race.

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed the crew needed to cut back its tempo greater than meant because it wanted to forestall its vehicles from overheating.

“We had one concern the place the best way that we predicted the cooling had meant that we had been under-cooled, so we’re investigating why that wasn’t in keeping with expectation,” Shovlin defined in a video printed by the crew. “The consequence was that we needed to ask the drivers to do lift-and-coast.

“This helps cool the ability unit, nevertheless it prices lap time. It additionally meant that neither driver might actually assault the vehicles forward of them. Later within the race, we bought into clearer air, so issues had been in a greater window when it comes to the temperatures. We might allow them to assault the vehicles forward and we had been capable of present higher tempo.

“It was additionally that the degradation of the tyres was good. The tip of our stints had been trying higher than the early components of the stints. You might see that pattern and first rate efficiency, significantly for George [Russell], on the finish of that first stint the place he was going very nicely.”

Russell had solely been capable of qualify 18th, therefore he selected to start out on a tougher tyre, and he ran as excessive as fourth throughout his opening stint. He was again right down to eighth by the point he made his first pit cease, having jumped a number of drivers who got here in everybody, and he returned to trace in 14th.

Like Perez, Russell did his second and third stints on the medium tyres. He climbed to sixth earlier than making his second pit cease, which solely price him two locations, and he recovered to sixth on the flag.

“Our simulations didn’t actually have him fairly get into the factors,” mentioned Shovlin. “It’s a very troublesome observe to overhaul on, so he really exceeded the expectations of all our fashions and simulations. It was some very nice overtaking that he was doing and having to stability that with managing the engine temperatures.

“Clearly, he would have been rather a lot happier to start out additional up and end additional up. So we are going to attempt to try this subsequent time.”

2023 Hungarian Grand Prix

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