Hungarian Grand Prix: George Russell had to be ‘stronger than ever’ to face challenges

He said: “These new power units are exceptionally complex, and something that goes deep into the calibration and code is almost impossible to see unless you know exactly what to look for. So I’m glad we got it.”

“Spa and Silverstone just exposed it because of the nature of the track. Of course what happened on Sunday is a bit disappointing, but I’m looking forward to it now, that’s how the game will go.”

The knock-on effect of the problem of energy management in the spa is that Russell wastes time chasing it, which would be better for other things.

“Coming out of Monaco and into Barcelona and Austria, I made some changes to my driving style and I felt like I made a good step forward,” said Russell.

“And I was on pole in both of those races and I won in Austria and I wanted to continue that momentum going forward.

“I’m guilty of probably being too distracted and spending too much time trying to change my driving style, more for the power unit, rather than trying to drive faster, so it’s learning again.

“We recognized after the spa, it wasn’t in the driving style. So that’s something that, at least, I didn’t know pre-spa was a proven lesson.”

Hungary is a completely different circuit to Spa and Silverstone in nature and is expected to favor Ferrari due to their strong cornering performance.

But both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have downplayed their chances despite winning two of their last four races.

Hamilton said: “Mercedes is still the team to beat. They’ve won almost all the races, they’re fast at all the circuits, they’re fast at the slow pace, they’re fast in Monaco. You have to imagine they can be just as fast this weekend.”

McLaren has a big upgrade this weekend that the team will hope will put them back at the front, but Lando Norris was cautious about his hopes.

“We want to be optimistic about it,” said the world champion. “We want to be confident and hopefully that will fix and limit some of the issues we are struggling with right now.

“There’s been a few improvements this year that haven’t worked out as well as we hoped, so I think we’re being a little more cautious in waiting to see if it works out as well as we’d hoped.”