Antonelli felt "more confidence in the car" despite his disappointing qualifying result

Having fallen in the second qualifying segment, Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli claims that he felt more confidence in his modified W16 despite the poor result.

There were mixed fortunes at Mercedes in Budapest, with George Russell impressing with an unexpected fourth place after struggling across the practice sessions.

His team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli had looked the faster of the two in the third and final practice, but he lost his pace in the constantly-changing conditions in qualifying.

His first lap in Q2 on a set of used Pirellis was not enough and he had to go again. The Italian lost his second lap time to track limits, although it still would not have been enough to make Q3.

Commenting on his performance in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, Antonelli was left to rue the lack of grip on his final push lap in Q2 which made his life difficult after a strong performance in the opening stages of the all-important session.

"I’ve felt much more confidence in the car and in myself this weekend. I felt good going into qualifying and Q1 went smoothly. It is annoying and frustrating therefore to get knocked out in Q2.

"I came out of the final corner to start my last lap and felt less grip with the rear tyres than on my previous effort. That became worse throughout the lap so it’s likely we were a bit too hot on the tyre temperatures.

The Italian continued: "We definitely had the pace to get through to Q3 and fight near the front of the grid. We will need to look through the data and understand how we can improve next time.

"Tomorrow is a new day though and we will explore how we can fight back into the points. The weather forecast is mixed, and we will be prepared for all scenarios. We had good pace on our long run in FP2 and hopefully we can use that to good effect."