World champion takes pole by 0.575s from Nico Rosberg; Rosberg by contrast struggling with his set-up; "I was nowhere," laments German after strong showing in final practice
Monday 27 July 2015 14:16, UK
Lewis Hamilton says he’s been taking “baby steps” all weekend so far at the Hungarian GP - but the world champion certainly didn’t trip up during qualifying on Saturday.
Hamilton instead claimed his fifth pole position at the Hungaroring by a margin of 0.575s from Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg, with the championship leader now chasing his fifth win in Sunday’s race.
“I’m generally always really happy here, but it’s also a very physically and technically demanding circuit. It’s very difficult to get the car right but I think we started on the right foot this weekend,” Hamilton told Sky Sports News HQ afterwards.
“Rather than try to change too much and go the wrong route, which is very easy to do, we didn’t. We just took real small baby steps to improve the car and at the end of the day it was as good as I could get it.”
Unlike Hamilton, Rosberg did take the wrong route, although he was at a loss to explain what went wrong having only been fractionally slower than his team-mate during final practice.
By contrast, qualifying saw the German battling understeer. “It really took me by surprise,” he said. “The car was totally different to what I’d been expecting, a completely different place, and it was really difficult to sort of artificially sort it out – because the problem is that once we get to qualifying, we’re not allowed to change the set-up of the car anymore.
“So I had limited options of what I could do to improve things and that was annoying.
“This morning in free practice I was quite excited. I was like, ‘It’s going to be good today’. But I was nowhere in qualifying.”
According to Mercedes technical boss Paddy Lowe, Rosberg had struggled with his car’s tyre pressures during qualifying.
“Nico was having a lot of problems with front tyre pressure which probably explains some of the coming in and out in terms of relative pace,” Lowe told Sky Sports F1.
“And then in his final lap, he had a lock-up in the final sector, which probably explains most of the gap.”
Lowe also explained that Rosberg had been on the back foot during Friday practice owing to what he described as a “configuration” problem with his W06.
“We need to apologise to Nico for Friday; there was a mistake in the configuration of the car we didn’t discover unfortunately until the evening. So yesterday he was struggling a bit and we can explain that,” he said.
Hamilton describes the 4.361km track as a particular favourite of his, but of course Rosberg could turn the tables at the lights on Sunday much as he did in Austria last month.
“I don’t feel nervous about it but naturally the starts are the one inconsistent factor I would say in the weekends so far,” Hamilton added. "But we’ve done a lot of work to improve it as we do every time, so I’m hoping it’ll be good.
“It’s the last start in this sequence of starts we’re going to be able to do anyway; obviously from Belgium things change a little bit, so I’m hoping for a good one.”
Rosberg added: “Car-wise, if anything my balance is for the race. It’s not what I wanted but it’s the way it’s gone.
“There’s going to be some opportunities, definitely, also in terms of strategy but let’s see.”
