02/08/2025 08:10
Lewis Hamilton declared an inconsistent balance on the opening day
of the Hungarian Grand Prix as the cause of his latest "big
struggle". The eight-time Hungarian GP winner was sixth on the
timesheets at the end of second practice, seven-tenths adrift of
Lando Norris at the front of the field. Concerningly, Hamilton was
also three-tenths slower than Charles Leclerc, who was McLaren's
closest challenger at the Hungaroring. Hamilton is the most
successful F1 driver at the Hungarian venue by a staggering
distance, but encountered issues at the track he has previously
never experienced. "Today was not a good day. Big, big struggle
with the balance of the car," said Hamilton after second practice.
"Yeah, a lot different to the previous years I've been here." The
balance of the SF-25 has been a pressing issue for Hamilton across
the majority of the campaign so far, with multiple methods of
fixing the issue having been tested on Friday. Unfortunately,
nothing worked to make the seven-time world champion comfortable,
to the extent that his car behaved differently in each corner.
Hamilton does wonder if the problem is linked to tyre temperature,
something the Maranello-based outfit will look into overnight ahead
of third practice. "We tried two different things," revealed
Hamilton. "We tried to rectifying some of the balance problem we
had in FP1. We changed the car for FP2 and it's just inconsistent.
"Very, very inconsistent balance from corner to corner. So you
can't say it's just understeer, you can't just say it's oversteer.
It's just far from being on rails and very, very out of balance.
"So, but I think it's probably something to do with maybe tyre
temperatures or something. So, we're going to try and figure that
out for tomorrow."
