Mercedes' 'experiments with the car' took them 'backwards' at FP2 of 2022 F1 Hungarian GP, says trackside engineer

Mercedes' Director of Trackside Engineering Andrew Shovlin revealed that their Friday free practice sessions ahead of the 2022 F1 Hungarian GP were compromised in terms of performance due to experimental work carried out on the cars. The British engineer feels the experimental set-up was a setback instead of a step forward.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the free practice sessions, Shovlin explained, saying:

“We came in wanting to do some experiments with the car, and I think the ones that we did in FP2 have taken us backwards. For the first session, we looked a bit stronger, the car was more together. There’s a couple of things that I’m pretty certain we’re going to be doing overnight, because it didn’t look great.”

In FP1, George Russell was fifth-fastest while Lewis Hamilton was seventh-fastest, whereas in FP2 the former was eighth-fastest while the latter was 11th-fastest. Explaining their downfall in performance, Shovlin revealed that Mercedes intended to experiment with their car on the Hungarian circuit. The experiments, however, set them back in terms of performance in the sessions and did not produce a positive result.

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Mercedes believe weather forecast for qualifying and race could change dynamic

Andrew Shovlin feels the rain forecast for Saturday and the cooler temperatures on Sunday could change the performance dynamic again. Having experimented with set-ups in Friday's practice sessions, the Briton feels Mercedes have enough data to sift through their issues and understand their performance issues.

Looking forward to the remaining two days of the 2022 F1 Hungarian GP weekend, Shovlin said:

“In a way, [rain on Saturday] makes it not too bad that we’ve had a difficult FP2, because I think we’ll be facing quite different conditions in FP3, and then the race looks like it’s a lot cooler than today. It’s not the end of the world, but it’d be nice to have a session where you can work with the car a bit, and this wasn’t that. But there’s plenty of data for us to go through. I think we know the first things we want to do, and then the wet is a different game altogether.”

Mercedes were also beaten by McLaren and Alpine, who were impressive in Friday's practice sessions. The Woking-based team has brought a heavily updated car to Hungary and is expected to compete with the Silver Arrows in the race. If the Brackley squad, however, are unable to improve their car by Sunday, they risk losing points to their resurgent customer team.