Race weekend review
Last year Hungary gave us an epic race, Esteban Ocon claiming his first F1 win, Sebastian Vettel achieving a second podium for Aston Martin before being disqualified because of a lack of fuel and Lewis Hamilton coming through the field ultimately promoted to 2nd.
This year, F1 headed into the weekend after the shocking announcement that Sebastian Vettel would retire at the end of the season. The four time world champion made his announcement via Instagram on Thursday before speaking more on it during press conferences that same day. Many drivers spoke about the positive influence Sebastian had on the sport during his career.
Practice
In FP1, our trio of Sainz, Verstappen and Leclerc were the front runners; it was also a good session for McLaren as their drivers were P4 and P8. Reserve driver Kubica took Bottas’ place in FP1, the first of the two to use the new floor for the car.
As Hungary was a track that would seem to suit Ferrari, it was no surprise that both cars were in the top 3 in FP2; the surprise was Lando Norris was the car to split the Ferraris, claiming P2 for the papaya team. Verstappen was P4, just ahead of the McLaren of Ricciardo in P5 and world champions Alonso and Vettel in P6 and 7. It was P8 and P11 for Mercedes, Hamilton found some traffic on his fast lap which cost him some time.
It rained on Saturday, so intermediate tyres were used in FP3 where we saw probably one of the most surprising finishes to a session. Williams had a 1 and 3 finish, Latifi in P1 and Albon in P3, with Leclerc squashed in between them. Vetstappen was P4, a further eight tenths back on Albon.
Sebastian Vettel finished ninth but crashed out towards the end of the session, which brought out a red flag. Aston Martin had to work hard to get his car ready on time for qualifying— and they did exactly that.
Qualifying
No rain for qualifying meant that racing would go back to normal in the order of things. The regular front runners of Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari set times to keep them safe. A reoccurring sight was both Haas cars making it to Q2 but only one of the Aston Martin cars escaped elimination and it was Lance Stroll— Sebastian Vettel could only take P18, a result he was very unhappy with considering the teams hard work to get him back out in time.
There was more misfortune at AlphaTauri with both cars failing to escape danger—track limits saw Gasly’s time deleted and dropped him back down into the bottom five.
Eliminated in Q1: Tsunoda, Albon, Vettel, Gasly, Latifi
In Q2 Perez had his first lap time deleted for track limits, meaning an extra one was needed. It was later restored after review of the lap. This was unfortunately not enough to save the Mexican who was eliminated from Q2 as his time was not fast enough (by the smallest of margins); he later blamed traffic as the reason he missed out on the final qualifying session. Ricciardo’s P8 in Q2 meant that McLaren had another top 10 shootout with both cars.
Eliminated in Q2: Perez, Zhou, Magnussen, Stroll, Schumacher
For some people, Q3 did not go as planned. After first runs, Sainz was on provisional pole, ahead of an unexpected Russell and Leclerc. An angry Verstappen could only see 7th after his first run, complaining that there was a loss of power in his car which the team tried to fix.
Leclerc could not outdo his teammate who seemed set for his second pole position with another stellar lap, so he was to start the race from third. Although he did not set purple sector times, small improvements across the lap as a whole saw George Russell set the fastest time on the board, landing him a surprising first pole position.
Verstappens problems continued so he was stuck in 10th place, while Lewis Hamilton had an issue with DRS and he was left in seventh place.
The top 10: Russell, Sainz, Leclerc, Norris, Ocon, Alonso, Hamilton, Bottas, Ricciardo, Verstappen.
Race report
You might be wondering, how on earth did the two Ferraris finish outside of the podium and how did Verstappen and Hamilton finish 1-2? Well, it was down to some brilliant pieces of strategy and some not so brilliant pieces of strategy.
Verstappen added another win to his tally at a race it almost didn’t seem like he was in contention to win. A brilliant strategy curated by Hannah Schmitz, Red Bull’s principal strategy engineer gave the Dutchman the means to take the victory. The reigning world champion started 10th and with a series of clever calls by Schmitz, the team did an undercut on Sainz and Verstappen made plenty of important overtakes which ultimately saw him victorious. In all of this, Verstappen managed to add a 360 spin into the mix and do his overtake on Leclerc once more. He now leads the championship by 80 points. Perez made up many places from his 11th place start, good overtaking skills and good strategy saw him finish P5.
Mercedes for the first time this season saw their drivers take back to back double podiums, a huge improvement for the team considering that they felt they were very far behind their competitors. Hamilton went for the medium-medium soft strategy which allowed him to eventually over take Sainz and Russell in the latter part of the race and take second place for the second time in a row. Russell, the pole sitter went with the opposite strategy, soft-medium-medium which earned him another podium, finishing ahead of Sainz.
Questionable decisions cost Ferrari what should have been a 1-2 this weekend. The ongoing debate of strategy within the came has been a subject previously discussed by the media. With a more optimal strategy than his teammate, Sainz had a reasonable race but slow pit stops saw him only take P4 as the highest Ferrari finisher. Leclerc on the other hand, will be asking questions to the team supposed to help him challenge for the championship, what is the story with the bad strategy calls? He suffered from lack of grip and speed when the team chose to put him on hard tyres that were known to cause problems when he would’ve liked to stay on mediums longer and go on the same strategy as the others. He went to pits after a while, pitting for softs and finishing P6.
It was a mixed day for McLaren, Norris claimed the bragging rights for best of the rest with his P7 in a quiet enough race but Ricciardo was left P15 after he received a five second time penalty for a collision with Magnussen earlier in the race.
Alpine did not lose any of their lead to their competitors in the constructors’ championship, scoring the same points as McLaren with eighth and ninth place; they also had a pretty quiet race.
Completing the top 10 was Sebastian Vettel of Aston Martin, racing in Hungary for the last time. He had a very good race after his 18th place start, finishing in the points ahead of his teammate and almost catching Ocon at the very end. Stroll finished 11th, just outside of the points.
A good drive from Gasly saw him make up places from 19th to take P12; but, it was not so jolly on Tsunoda’s side of the garage as he finished last due to spin which left him at the back.
Zhou was a lot further behind Gasly in 13th, while Bottas retired from the race early with laps to go. For Haas it was not an eventful race, Schumacher was 14th and Magnussen 16th. Finally, Williams drivers were 17th and 18th, not a great day at the office for them.
It is now the summer break, with 4 weeks off from racing, it officially is the beginning of “silly season” where we await unexpected news about driver contracts and all sorts of crazy things. Keep updated by following The Fastest Sector on all social media platforms and the blog for more posts!
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