Mercedes faced issues as a result of the global IT outages that were sparked by a Crowdstrike software update on Friday, but the team says it limited the impact on its running.
There has been widespread disruption to IT systems around the world that Crowdstrike – a Mercedes team partner – says was triggered by an update to its antivirus software designed for Microsoft Windows. Prior to the start of FP1, the screens on the Mercedes pit wall were seen to be down, but trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin says the situation was quickly resolved at the Hungaroring.
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“We’ve had great support from [Crowdstrike] and all our partners,” Shovlin said. “There was a bit of work that we had to do. We’ve got a lot of computers around the garage and in pit walls and things here, and those all needed updating, but we’ve worked through that. The impact in FP1 was minimal, if not nil. So, as I said, it created a bit of work, but we’re back where we need to be now.”
Once track action did get underway, Mercedes was unable to follow up its victory at Silverstone by remaining at the top of the standings, with George Russell fifth and Lewis Hamilton seventh in FP2, both over half a second adrift. Hamilton admits it has been a tricky start to the weekend, although he believes there is an area Mercedes can look to address overnight.
“Today’s not been a good day, really,” the British Grand Prix winner said. “The weather’s been good and it’s been nice to be here, but we’ve not really been on form today. The car hasn’t felt good set-up-wise, but I think we have an idea why and we’ll just work overnight, but not the best prep so far.
“Little tweaks [were made between FP1 and FP2] but the car was pretty much the same. There’s a particular thing that we left that we changed into this weekend that we probably need to go back on. But it’s all relatively close otherwise. We couldn’t do the pace of the other guys today, but the long run pace was pretty decent at the end.
Amid high temperatures, Hamilton also says there was no obvious improvement in the car’s handling in such conditions, adding: “No, it felt just as bad as it does normally when it’s hot!”