Mercedes reveal cooling error behind loss of pace in Hungarian GP

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

Hamilton had started from pole and lost the lead at the start, then ran in fourth until his first pit stop when he switched from medium to hard compound tyres. However he did not then push when on those tyres, particularly at the start of his stint, and lost several seconds to the cars ahead.

After his second pit stop, with 21 laps to go, Hamilton increased his pace. He overtook McLaren’s Oscar Piastri, but ran out of time to take third place from Red Bull’s Sergio Perez, who had successfully jumped ahead of the Mercedes through the pits. The pair were separated by just one-and-a-half seconds at the end of the race.

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed the team had to reduce its pace more than intended as it needed to prevent its cars from overheating.

“We had one issue where the way that we predicted the cooling had meant that we were under-cooled, so we are investigating why that wasn’t in line with expectation,” Shovlin explained in a video published by the team. “The consequence was that we had to ask the drivers to do lift-and-coast.

“This helps cool the power unit, but it costs lap time. It also meant that neither driver could really attack the cars ahead of them. Later in the race, we got into clearer air, so things were in a better window in terms of the temperatures. We could let them attack the cars ahead and we were able to show better pace.

“It was also that the degradation of the tyres was good. The end of our stints were looking better than the early parts of the stints. You could see that trend and decent performance, particularly for George [Russell], at the end of that first stint where he was going very well.”

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Russell had only been able to qualify 18th, hence he chose to start on a harder tyre, and he ran as high as fourth during his opening stint. He was back down to eighth by the time he made his first pit stop, having jumped several drivers who came in everyone, and he returned to track in 14th.

Like Perez, Russell did his second and third stints on the medium tyres. He climbed to sixth before making his second pit stop, which only cost him two places, and he recovered to sixth at the flag.

“Our simulations didn’t really have him quite get into the points,” said Shovlin. “It is a very difficult track to overtake on, so he actually exceeded the expectations of all our models and simulations. It was some really nice overtaking that he was doing and having to balance that with managing the engine temperatures.

“Obviously, he would have been a lot happier to start further up and finish further up. So we will try and do that next time.”

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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