Lewis Hamilton says Red Bull's advantage over the rest of the F1 field has narrowed in recent races. The Briton beat Max Verstappen to pole position for Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix by just 0.003 seconds, representing the first time he will line up first on an F1 grid since the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. While Red Bull have won all ten races so far in 2023, Hamilton suggested that the drinks-backed squad do not have as much of an advantage as they had earlier in the year, with other teams having delivered upgrades to their 2023 mounts. Red Bull have introduced an update of their own for this weekend, prompting Hamilton to ponder how they failed to secure pole position. "Honestly, I think [Red Bull] have slowed down quite a bit from the beginning of the year," Hamilton told Sky F1 . "They've still got the DRS, [but] they don't have the DRS advantage all of a sudden that they used to have. Where did that go? "But they've just had an upgrade, so we expected them to have taken another step. We heard it was around two-tenths or something like that, so for them to not have been able to extract that in Qualifying is interesting."
Hamilton: Red Bull still favourites
However, despite their failure to take pole position, the Briton cautioned that Verstappen and Red Bull would still be favourites to win Sunday's 70-lap race. Hamilton also reserved praise for his former team McLaren, who have followed up their strong showing at the British Grand Prix with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri lining up third and fourth on Sunday's grid. "I think in the race [Red Bull are] still the quickest and it will be very hard to beat them," said Hamilton. "We're just as surprised as everybody else, but definitely interesting to see some of the deficits and how it's changed from race to race and how we've all closed up, and super happy to see McLaren in there."
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