Hamilton questions Red Bull's DRS advantage: "Where did that go?"

Lewis Hamilton has qualified on pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix to line up on the front row alongside Max Verstappen for the first time since the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. In an interview after the session, Hamilton questioned why, in his opinion, Red Bull's advantage has suddenly disappeared.

For the first time in six races, a Red Bull car will not start from pole position. Christian Horner's team are hunting down a record-breaking 12th consecutive Grand Prix win, a record that has stood since 1988. The rest of the F1 field have been playing catch up, and most have introduced significant upgrades over the last two months. The gap has somewhat narrowed, and Hamilton suggests Red Bull are actually "slowing down".

"Honestly, I think they've slowed down quite a bit from the start of the year," Hamilton said in an interview on Sky Sports. Hamilton then zoomed in on the car's performance and mentioned a specific area.

"They don't have the DRS advantage all of a sudden that they used to have. Where did that go? They just had an upgrade, so you would've expected them to take another step. We heard two-tenths. For them not to extract that in qualifying is interesting. It's interesting to see how it's changed race to race and how we've all closed up," Hamilton added.

Hamilton admitted it will still be very challenging to beat Verstappen in Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix. Hungary is a twisty circuit where overtaking is difficult, so the run down to turn one will be very important for both drivers. But by asking the question to the media, Hamilton seems to wonder what happened. Ted Kravitz suggested it's Hamilton's plan to "get the media to investigate that".