It was a rough day for Lewis Hamilton at the Hungaroring, finishing sixth in Friday’s second practice session and trailing teammate Charles Leclerc by a significant margin.
The seven-time world champion ended FP2 three tenths behind Leclerc – a pretty big gap on a track where lap times are just over 1 minute 15 seconds.
While not as disastrous as Max Verstappen‘s Friday struggles, Hamilton clearly wasn’t happy with his performance.
“Today was not a good day for me,” Hamilton told Sky Sports afterward. “Big, big struggle with the balance of the car. A lot different to the previous years I’ve been here.”
The Mercedes driver experimented with different setups throughout the day, trying to fix issues that emerged in the first practice session.
“We tried rectifying some of the balance problems we had in P1, we changed the car in P2, and it’s just very, very inconsistent balance from corner to corner,” he explained.
Hamilton couldn’t even pinpoint exactly what was wrong with the car’s handling.
“You can’t say it’s understeer, you can’t just say it’s oversteer, it’s just far from being on rails and very out of balance.”
The Brit suspects temperature issues might be the culprit. “I think it’s probably something to do with maybe tyre temperatures, so we’re going to try to figure that out for tomorrow.”
When asked if he could target a second-row start in qualifying, Hamilton was pessimistic.
“I mean Charles has been quick today. He’s been generally happy with the car. For me, I’m quite far off, so I highly doubt it.”
With qualifying just hours away, Mercedes engineers face a long night trying to solve Hamilton’s car issues at a track where he’s historically performed well.
