Mercedes representative Bradley Lord took stock of the initial practice sessions for the Hungarian GP, held this Friday (24), pointing out some difficulties in getting the car into its ideal operating window. He also skirted around questions regarding the power unit software fault that had particularly hindered George Russell in previous F1 rounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Andrea Kimi Antonelli handing over his W17 to Frederik Vesti for FP1, Russell was the only regular driver to participate in the opening session, finishing in fifth place\u2014nearly 1s off session-leader Charles Leclerc. Hours later in FP2, he set a 1:19.662 to finish fifth once again, well ahead of his Italian teammate in the #12, who placed 13th with a 1:20.693 on the clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“On qualifying pace, we were lacking grip and balance. We couldn’t get the tires into the optimal temperature window for the push lap. On the other hand, during the long runs, the car looked very consistent and competitive compared to Ferrari, [Max] Verstappen, and McLaren. This indicates we need to do a better job on the flying laps,” Lord assessed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regarding the underlying code issue responsible for power unit management\u2014which became a topic of discussion after the Belgian GP\u2014Lord demurred, explaining that a deeper analysis of the matter has not yet been possible. “Until we complete a competitive qualifying lap with a direct comparison between the two cars\u2014which wasn’t possible today\u2014we won’t have a definitive answer. But we remain completely confident,” he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have a competitive car at every circuit and we’ve claimed every pole position so far. At some point that streak will come to an end, but we’ll do everything we can to ensure it doesn’t happen in Hungary. We have plenty of work ahead overnight and a few issues to resolve, but we hope to find a strong level of performance for FP3,” he concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
GRANDE PR\u00caMIO<\/strong> is covering all the track action from the Hungarian GP, the 11th round of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mercedes Communications Director and representative Bradley Lord highlighted qualifying pace as the team’s primary concern compared to its rivals in Budapest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1020310604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"42wp_featured_image_caption":"George Russell","42wp_featured_image_credits":"Mercedes","42wp_featured_video":"","42wp_featured_image_hidden":false,"42wp_authors_list":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,16],"42wp_author":[58],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","tag-grande-premio","tag-mercedes","42wp_author-vicente-soella"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1020310604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"42wp_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/42wp_author?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}