Mercedes technical director James Allison has confirmed that Lewis Hamilton and George Russell will both have their newly designed front wing at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, an event Hamilton has won eight times.
The Silver Arrows head to the Hungaroring hopeful of a good weekend, especially with their upgrades set to make them “faster”.
This weekend will certainly be a fascinating one for the side, considering that they looked “competitive” in the slow-speed corners at the recent British Grand Prix, where the new front wing was introduced.
Given that the Hungaroring is made up of several slow to medium-speed corners, Mercedes could be in with a chance of at least a podium.
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Simply not being defeated by any of their customer teams will likely be taken as a positive though, especially as they’ve been beaten by a much-improved McLaren in the last two races.
Allison is confident that Mercedes can be strong though, with this weekend set to determine whether their new front wing is actually a step in the right direction or not.
“The new front-wing is of course designed to make us go faster,” Allison said. “That’s why we do all our things.
“The specific characteristics of this new front-wing that we are excited about, is that it should improve the balance and performance of the car through the slower range of the corners. Now, Silverstone is famous for lots of things but lots and lots of slow corners is not one of them.
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“What we took as a comfort from Silverstone is that in the slower parts of the track, we were looking pretty decently competitive. That’s a tick in the box for this new front-wing.
“But I guess it will only be when we get to Hungary, which is a track made up almost entirely of slower stuff, that we’ll get to know for sure. Early signs are promising, the new front-wing seemed to do what we expected and hopefully it will bring us more at tracks which have a wider range of slow corners.”
Interestingly, Mercedes’ last pole position came at the Hungarian GP 12 months ago, courtesy of Russell.