After a difficult first half to the F1 season, George Russell delivered Mercedes’ best qualifying result of the campaign with a shock pole at the Hungaroring.

While the team has no proper explanation for why things went so well at the tight and bumpy circuit, Wolff suspects that out of the box thinking with test items and setup at each race weekend has been critical in unlocking something on its W13.

He cited the example of the team running a new floor at the British GP that had not been evaluated in the windtunnel as one stand out example of not doing things as it has in the past.

“This season, we have done unconventional things,” he explained. “I remember having a chat with a very clever lady in aerodynamics and she said: ‘if you would have told me last year that we’re putting a floor on the car that we haven’t run in the windtunnel, I would have said we are never going to do this.’ We did and everybody was proud of the results.

“It’s been same thing every weekend, and more so on Friday and Saturday here. We’ve tried things.”

Mercedes has struggled to get a proper direction on developments this year, with the team often finding that data from the windtunnel is not fully matching up with what it is experiencing on track.

That has prompted it to be a bit bolder with its approach to race weekends, in the hope of finding the answer for this disparity.

“This is a database sport,”…