Lewis Hamilton expects Mercedes will have a difficult weekend in Hungary as the team could suffer more than rivals in the extremely hot conditions.
In addition the team has yet to test the latest Pirelli tyres, after being banned from the Silverstone test.
“It’s going to be tough this weekend definitely – the conditions will not help,” said Hamilton. “Plus, we haven’t driven the tyres as everyone else has. We’ve got a bit of catching up to do, but that’s what we do best and we just have to work as hard as we can this weekend to try to understand the tyres and put ourselves in the best position possible. We have a lot of work to do to continue to improve our race pace, but I anticipate it will be a difficult weekend.”
Hamilton expects teams to suffer aerodynamically as they create extra cooling.
“I’m sure everyone is going to have to open up their cars, so everyone is in the same boat in terms of car packaging and the heat that the cars are absorbing. Tyre-wise, of course there are teams that will deal with it slightly better than us, just naturally, and there are some people that will deal with it the same as us.”
Despite his reservations about the new tyres, Hamilton insisted he wasn’t worried about missing the Pirelli testing at Silverstone.
“To be honest, it doesn’t really faze me. I think it would have definitely helped if we were there and we have an understanding of how to set up the car with the new tyres and to see what kind of characteristics they have and how they behave on long runs and all those kind of things but we will try and find that out this weekend. At the end of the day, it is what it is and we will just try to do the best with what we’ve got. It’s a great team, I have no doubt that we will make up for the lost time.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Good.