Difficult Saturday in Budapest

• Kimi Antonelli qualified P4, but will start P7, with George Russell qualifying P7 and starting P6 for tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

• The team made progress in FP3 with its single lap pace, looking competitive in a tight fight with the McLarens and the Ferraris.

• That pace didn’t quite translate into qualifying though with the drivers mainly losing time in the final sector.

• Q2 saw a small scare for Kimi with his initial effort deleted for track limits; his second effort saw him progress to Q3 in P8 with George in P9.

• The top 10 shootout saw McLaren and Ferrari leading the way; Kimi’s final effort was interrupted by yellow flags and after the session, his lift was deemed insufficient and he was handed a three-place grid penalty.

• George meanwhile qualified P7 and had to stop immediately after the line with a loss of water pressure; subsequent investigations led the team to change the Power Unit on George’s car which will be his fourth introduced unit of the season.

• As the change is being made to replace a damaged component with one of the same specification, George will incur no grid penalty.

• With other penalties taken into account, George will line up for Sunday’s race in P6 with Kimi in P7.

Kimi Antonelli

We knew this weekend would be challenging as this track suits other teams and we’ve seen others bring more upgrades. We were in the ballpark to fight for pole position though, but we didn’t have our cleanest qualifying session of the year. My final lap was strong, probably my best of the weekend so far. I lifted on the final corner because of the yellow flag for Max (Verstappen) and I lost just under two tenths of a second. Unfortunately, that wasn’t deemed sufficient by the stewards.

Tomorrow is not going to be easy. Overtaking is going to be difficult, and we are now starting much further back that we could have been. Our long run pace on Friday was good too so we will be doing everything we can to fight for the win.

George Russell

We expected Ferrari to be strong here this weekend and McLaren, with their upgrades, have taken a step forward. So it proved today where we couldn’t quite get ourselves consistently in the mix. It certainly wasn’t the easiest of sessions. We suffered a water leak on our final lap, and we stopped as a precaution once we’d finished our effort. Unfortunately, once we got the car back to the garage, we found that the damage was quite severe and we will have to take a new Power Unit ahead of tomorrow’s race.

We made progress with our pace from Friday to Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to get ourselves in the fight for pole. There were clues as to why we were struggling more on the single lap yesterday as our race pace was strong. That suggested it was more tyre driven than the performance of the car itself but we will only find that out tomorrow.

Toto Wolff, CEO & Team Principal

We had an underwhelming qualifying session today. Both drivers were unlucky on their final laps: Kimi with the yellow flag and George with the water leak. Our pace wasn’t likely strong enough to fight for pole position today though. It’s not been our smoothest weekend, and we’ve not managed to get the tyres working as we would want. When you are running either too hot or too cold, that is where you lose the sweet spot of the car and struggle to get the most out of it.

Tomorrow will be a challenging race. Overtaking is difficult around here and starting from P6 and P7 is far from ideal. Our race pace was strong on Friday though and hopefully we can create opportunities where we can utilise that.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Overall it's not been an easy day here in Budapest. We made decent progress from Friday through final practice with Kimi just over one tenth adrift of the best time. By qualifying though, it was clear that we didn't have the pace to fight for pole.

It was quite difficult to get the car in a sweet spot with the changing track temperatures. That had us changing plans between a preparation lap to bring the tyres in and going for our efforts on the first lap. In the end we settled on no preparation lap but for George, the tyres weren't really biting, and he was losing time with understeer. Kimi also had understeer but was slightly happier and would have been on for at least P3 but for a yellow flag on his final lap. Sadly, the stewards judged that he didn’t lift enough for that yellow and he will now start P7 after being handed a grid drop.

The race pace was strong on Friday which will hopefully give us opportunity to move forward tomorrow. Given the difficulty in overtaking, we expect it will be very difficult to fight for podium positions though.

FP3 Result

Qualifying Result

*Will start P7 due to a grid penalty.