刘易斯·汉密尔顿问uestions disappearance of Red Bull’s huge DRS advantage

Jamie Woodhouse 22 Jul 2023 5:35 PM

Red Bull driver Max Verstappen followed by Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton. Canada June 2023.

With Lewis Hamilton believing Red Bull have lost a chunk of their pace advantage since the start of F1 2023, he is wondering what happened to one of their key weapons, the DRS system.

Red Bull remain undefeated in F1 2023, having won all 10 grands prix so far, but recent rounds have suggested that their untouchable pace advantage over the chasing pack is on the decline.

McLaren’s Lando Norris passed Red Bull’s runaway Championship leader Max Verstappen at the start of the British GP, leading the opening five laps, and now moving on to Hungary, Hamilton delivered another major blow to that aurora of invincibility.

刘易斯·汉密尔顿问uestions what happened to Red Bull’s DRS?

While Hamilton is an eight-time winner at the Hungaroring, very few, including Hamilton himself and his Mercedes team, expected him to pip Verstappen to pole position, but that is exactly what he did by a margin of just 0.003s.

Red Bull had brought an upgrade package for the RB19 to Hungary, expected to be worth a few tenths per lap, yet in qualifying trim under the Alternative Tyre Allocation [ATA] format, the Mercedes W14 reigned supreme.

Hamilton then was asked whether the chasing pack has closed in on Red Bull, or whether it is more a case of Red bull struggling to hit the heights of earlier in the season.

Hamilton is of the belief that Red Bull have lost performance, and called out their Drag Reduction System, which earlier in the campaign was believed to be worth as much as three-tenths per lap.

Asked by Sky F1 if rival teams have reeled Red Bull in, while told Fernando Alonso had suggested the new Pirelli tyre construction is hurting Red Bull, Hamilton replied: “Honestly, I think they’ve slowed down quite a bit from the beginning of the year.

“I mean, they’ve still got the DRS, they don’t have the DRS advantage all of a sudden that they used to have. Where did that go?

“But I mean they’ve just had an upgrade, so we expected them to have taken another step. We heard it was around two-tenths or something like that. So for them to not have been able to extract that in qualifying is interesting.”

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Hamilton does believe Red Bull will come into their own again come race day, though returned to the belief that the ‘best of the rest’ pack are now reducing Red Bull’s advantage, while he gave a shoutout to his former team McLaren who he is delighted to see involved in that conversation.

“I think in the race they’re still the quickest and I think it will be very hard to beat them tomorrow,” Hamilton continued.

“But yeah, we’re just as surprised as everybody else, but definitely interesting to see some of the deficits and how it’s changed from race to race to race and how we’ve all closed up, and super happy to see McLaren in there.”

While Hamilton heads the front row in Hungary alongside Verstappen, row two will be made up of the McLaren duo, Norris set to launch from P3 and Oscar Piastri P4.