Why Wolff believes Mercedes were second-quickest despite Hamilton’s fall to fourth

Were Mercedes quick enough to beat McLaren to second place in the Hungarian Grand Prix? Team principal Toto Wolff thought so but Lewis Hamilton wasn’t convinced.

Beating Max Verstappen, who won by over half a minute, was obviously never going to be an option. “The fight’s not with Max,” Hamilton said after the race. Mercedes were “hoping that we could fight the McLarens,” he added, “but the second McLaren was too quick for us also.”

However Wolff believes only the Red Bull was decisively quicker than the Mercedes around the Hungaroring. “I think we had the second quickest car today but the result doesn’t show it,” he said. “You can say in theory we had the second-quickest car, we didn’t monetise on it today.”

“We’ve got to find out how we could have done that better,” said Wolff, noting that George Russell raced from 18th to sixth. “We can see that George came back from a long way down, beating the Aston Martins, beating the Ferraris. So we just need to analyse that.”

2023 Hungarian Grand Prix lap chart

The positions of each driver on every lap. Click name to highlight, right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:

Hamilton’s race clearly went awry when he was beaten off the line by Verstappen, who passed the pole-winner on the run to turn one. But Wolff also suspects Mercedes were “too careful” in how they treated their tyres.

The combination of the steep rise in track temperatures on race day, plus the new Alternative Tyre Allocation which limited how much pre-race running the teams did, left question marks over exactly how well the rubber would perform. Mercedes realised they could have pushed harder on their tyres earlier in the stint.

“I think we were too careful in bringing the [tyres] in,” said Wolff. “I think after the stops we lost a lot of time and it paid off towards the end of the stint because we were miles quicker than everybody else. But it’s always a balance and I believe the balance was a little bit too much in terms of bringing them in.”

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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix lap times

All the lap times by the drivers (in seconds, very slow laps excluded). Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and toggle drivers using the control below:

The top four drivers on the grid all started on the medium tyre compound, switched to hards and returned to mediums. Hamilton was noticeably more cautious on his hard tyres at the beginning of the second stint than Norris ahead of him: The Mercedes driver did two laps in the 1’25s at the start of this stint while Norris lapped in the 1’23s. At this point in the race Hamilton got on the radio and expressed his surprise that the McLaren driver had suddenly drawn nine seconds ahead.

Norris had to pay a price for pushing that hard early on. His hard tyre stint was six laps shorter than Hamilton’s and the Mercedes driver was closing on him by the end of it. Mercedes learned their lesson and Hamilton pushed harder at the start of his last stint on the medium tyres, but it wasn’t enough to catch Norris.

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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix race chart

The gaps between each driver on every lap compared to the leader’s average lap time. Very large gaps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:

The Mercedes driver was able to regain a place from the other McLaren of Oscar Piastri, but fell short of catching Sergio Perez by one-and-a-half seconds. Wolff said the team would have been in a stronger position if they had pushed harder sooner.

“To strike that balance right is really difficult because you can see if you’re hammering them like Lando did or Oscar did or also Checo did then at the end you’re just falling off massively,” he said. “So bringing them in when you can is definitely advantageous but probably we have been too conservative how we brought them in and we lost too much time.”

Perez and Russell both started on the hard tyres and ran long opening stints – 28 laps in the case of the Mercedes driver. That meant they could push on the medium tyre compound until the end of the race.

Russell indicated afterwards that his suggestion to Mercedes they make a third pit stop was serious. However it proved unnecessary as he was easily quick enough to pass Carlos Sainz Jnr’s Ferrari and didn’t need to pass Charles Leclerc on-track as he had a penalty.

The Mercedes drivers started the race with 16 cars between them, but were separated only by Piastri’s McLaren in the final classification. Hamilton was only 5.4s off Norris in second place, so had the team told him to push his tyres harder at the start of his second stint, he might just have taken second place. A better start, of course, would have put him in a much better position.

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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix tyre strategies

The tyre strategies for each driver:

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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix fastest laps

Each driver’s fastest lap:

Rank	No.	Driver	Car	Lap time	Gap	Average speed (kph)	Lap no.
1	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’20.504		195.91	53
2	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’21.601	1.097	193.28	54
3	63	George Russell	Mercedes	1’22.158	1.654	191.97	48
4	4	Lando Norris	McLaren-Mercedes	1’22.178	1.674	191.92	50
5	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull-Honda RBPT	1’22.295	1.791	191.65	53
6	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1’22.469	1.965	191.24	50
7	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	1’22.584	2.080	190.98	54
8	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren-Mercedes	1’22.736	2.232	190.63	45
9	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’22.745	2.241	190.6	51
10	22	Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT	1’23.269	2.765	189.41	68
11	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin-Mercedes	1’23.425	2.921	189.05	54
12	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams-Mercedes	1’23.496	2.992	188.89	36
13	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas-Ferrari	1’23.573	3.069	188.72	42
14	77	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’23.651	3.147	188.54	42
15	24	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’23.743	3.239	188.33	12
16	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’23.864	3.360	188.06	54
17	3	Daniel Ricciardo	AlphaTauri-Honda RBPT	1’23.934	3.430	187.9	67
18	23	Alexander Albon	Williams-Mercedes	1’24.051	3.547	187.64	54
19	31	Esteban Ocon	Alpine-Renault	1’41.181	20.677	155.88	2
20	10	Pierre Gasly	Alpine-Renault	2’04.981	44.477	126.19	1

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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix pit stop times

How long each driver’s pit stops took:

Rank	No.	Driver	Team	Complete stop time (s)	Gap to best (s)	Stop no.	Lap no.
1	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull	20.88		2	42
2	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren	21.171	0.291	1	18
3	22	Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri	21.181	0.301	2	44
4	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	21.402	0.522	1	15
5	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	21.407	0.527	1	23
6	4	Lando Norris	McLaren	21.43	0.55	2	44
7	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	21.452	0.572	2	43
8	4	Lando Norris	McLaren	21.541	0.661	1	17
9	63	George Russell	Mercedes	21.675	0.795	2	46
10	1	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	21.68	0.8	2	51
11	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	21.728	0.848	2	49
12	23	Alexander Albon	Williams	21.762	0.882	2	31
13	11	Sergio Perez	Red Bull	21.862	0.982	1	24
14	63	George Russell	Mercedes	21.886	1.006	1	28
15	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin	21.91	1.03	1	9
16	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas	21.955	1.075	2	38
17	3	Daniel Ricciardo	AlphaTauri	21.958	1.078	1	18
18	44	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	21.974	1.094	1	16
19	81	Oscar Piastri	McLaren	22.03	1.15	2	42
20	55	Carlos Sainz Jnr	Ferrari	22.051	1.171	2	44
21	23	Alexander Albon	Williams	22.076	1.196	1	8
22	77	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo	22.114	1.234	1	9
23	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	22.152	1.272	2	41
24	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams	22.197	1.317	2	34
25	3	Daniel Ricciardo	AlphaTauri	22.203	1.323	2	29
26	18	Lance Stroll	Aston Martin	22.403	1.523	2	34
27	20	Kevin Magnussen	Haas	22.753	1.873	1	14
28	24	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo	22.853	1.973	2	38
29	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin	22.916	2.036	1	20
30	27	Nico Hulkenberg	Haas	22.922	2.042	1	16
31	77	Valtteri Bottas	Alfa Romeo	23.242	2.362	2	40
32	2	Logan Sargeant	Williams	24.001	3.121	1	13
33	14	Fernando Alonso	Aston Martin	24.152	3.272	2	43
34	22	Yuki Tsunoda	AlphaTauri	26.17	5.29	1	9
35	16	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	28.404	7.524	1	17
36	24	Zhou Guanyu	Alfa Romeo	29.211	8.331	1	10

2023 Hungarian Grand Prix

• Was F1’s Alternative Tyre Allocation test successful? Drivers and teams have their say
• How far can McLaren climb with car rivals now say is the second-fastest in F1?
• Why Ricciardo says McLaren’s car “speaks Lando’s language” – but Norris disagrees
• Mercedes reveal cooling error behind loss of pace in Hungarian GP
• Perez answered critics in Hungary but needs to qualify better – Horner

Browse all 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix articles