Ted Kravitz claims Hamilton is trying to encourage ‘Red Bull investigation’

Ted Kravitz has claimed Lewis Hamilton is pushing for the media to ‘investigate’ Red Bull after surprisingly pipping Max Verstappen to pole position at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Sky Sports host claimed the seven-time champion was trying to get the media to “ask questions” as to why Red Bull’s pace had suddenly dropped off.

After securing pole, Hamilton suggested Verstappen and Sergio Perez’s DRS advantage had diminished. But Kravitz rejected Hamilton’s comments and felt the Mercedes driver was trying to cause a stir.

Speaking in his post-qualifying notebook, Kravitz said: “I know Lewis Hamilton is starting to encourage us in the media to ask questions as to why Red Bull, in his view, why Red Bull aren’t as quick as they used to be. And in his view why Red Bull aren’t getting the same advantage from the DRS that they have all season.

“I’m not sure that’s ultimately true. But Lewis certainly wants to put that out there and get the media to investigate that.” Hamilton appeared stunned after securing his 104th career pole position and his first in 18 months.

Red Bull have introduced a new sidepod upgrade for this weekend which had expected to boost performance by around two-tenths per lap. Verstappen’s inability to claim pole on Saturday prompted the Silver Arrows star to ask questions as he pointed out the reigning champion’s performance had fallen away.

Hamilton said: “I mean, they’ve still got the DRS, they don’t have the DRS advantage all of a sudden that they used to have. Where did that go? I mean 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.” Verstappen was beaten to pole by just 0.003 seconds after Hamilton put in an excellent final run.

However, the Dutchman will still line up on the front row as Red Bull looks to beat an F1 record for most successive race wins.

After the session, Red Bull boss Christian Horner suggested the team didn’t extract their full performance while he also revealed Verstappen lost control of his car at turn 13. The double world champion admitted he lacked confidence in the car but didn’t blame the new upgrades for their lack of pace.

He explained: “I think the update works, but I think we just really didn’t put everything together setup-wise because I just think today everything has just been all over the shop and not exactly where we wanted to be.”