Hungarian GP: Max Verstappen and the 30 seconds in his pocket

(Cover picture: Motorsport Images)

Re-adapting a famous football saying, "Formula 1 is easy: 20 drivers race and in the end Max Verstappen wins"... Well, this year more than ever, witnessing a race win by him at the end of each Grand Prix seems like a formality, in which the only curiosity is to understand what margin he will be able to inflict over his first direct rival.

The latter role, in Budapest as in Silverstone, fell to Lando Norris and his revitalized McLaren. Behind the two of them, here we have the final standings:

The race for the lowest steps of the podium was down to strategies

At the start, Lewis Hamilton's first position obtained thanks to Saturday's pole position didn't last long: Verstappen pulled alongside him and overtook into turn 1, where due to an excess of defense Lewis also found himself giving up the position to the two McLarens, with Piastri 2nd ahead of Norris 3rd.

Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

In the first laps, to tell the truth, the World Champion didn't pull away from Piastri and Norris, which somehow gave hope of a closer fight for victory than the last few Grands Prix. But the rest of the first stint, like the other two, demolished anyone's hopes: from that moment on, the fight for second place was limited to the two McLarens, Hamilton and Perez, who started from the ninth position.

Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

With cars featuring a fairly similar race pace and critical track conditions (50°C asphalt temperature), it seemed immediately clear how the focus of the race would shift to the strategies. And so it was.

In fact, all the drivers who reached the finish line completed the race over two stops, mainly on Medium and Hard compounds. In fact, the Softs turned out to be globally worse than the yellow striped tyres, with respect to which the laptime advantage was limited, but the superior wear made their use not recommended.

From this point of view, the exceptions were Sainz's Ferrari and Stroll's Aston Martin (starting on Softs), as well as Perez's Red Bull and Russell's Mercedes (starting on Hards instead). Apart from these 4 drivers, all the others covered from the first 12 to 23 laps on a set of Mediums: on this compound McLaren's pace was excellent, to the point of allowing their drivers to easily defend themselves against the risk of Hamilton's undercut.

The only "problem", if we want to define it that way, was having to call Norris to the pits first and - on the following lap - Piastri, who was ahead in the first stint. Doing this, the two exchanged their positions, which at first generated some controversy. But the pace kept by the two after the pit stop made it clear that the unplanned (?) swap had probably been the best move...

Chronometric analysis of the race pace held by the first 5 drivers classified

Chronometric analysis of the race pace held by the first 5 drivers classified

"Thanks to the fans. The race was tough, especially as Checo was closing in at the end, but he didn't have enough speed to catch up. There was a bit of a battle at the start and I got stuck in turn 1, but still it's another podium for McLaren, which is fantastic: right now we're very happy with where we are. If we think that four or five races ago we struggled to get past Q1, now we're fighting for podiums and poles. The team is great, they did a fantastic job back at the factory. We knew we were going to struggle at the start of the season, we looked weak but we had a huge push from the team”

Lando Norris

As can be seen from the race pace analysis, the pace of Hamilton and Perez would have put Norris' second place at risk, if the latter had stayed behind his teammate further. In my opinion, the one who has to complain most about the final result is Hamilton, who pays dearly for a second pit stop which took place - in hindsight - a couple of laps late; considering how the race pace of the Englishman from Mercedes gradually improved over the laps with respect to his compatriot from McLaren, we can assume that the second place (or at least the third, conquered by Perez) was within his reach.

Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

"My start wasn't the worst I've ever had, but it wasn't as good as the others: I went wide and even the McLarens overtook me. Then I didn't have the pace of the ones in front of me: in the first stint the balance of the car wasn't optimal and I had a lot of understeer, but as the laps went by the car started to become more drivable, and the last stint went much better. In the end my pace was very strong: if we had had it all the time, it would have been a much better day. In any case, I take the aspects positives of this weekend: pole position was an extraordinary effort by the team. We still have a lot of work to do to beat the Red Bulls in race conditions, but we keep pushing"

Lewis Hamilton

Again from the same graph, what was said at the beginning of the article strongly emerges, namely Verstappen's advantage over the competition: on lap 53, as soon as he had completed the out lap following his second and final pit stop, the Dutchman let slip a laptime of 1'20"504, in that moment from 2 to 3 seconds faster than all the others. That laptime will be the fastest lap at the end of the race, and will be faster than 1.1 s over Hamilton's best laptime (with the same strategy!).

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

"Finally we managed to get a good start, we worked a lot on it and finally we found the right clutch release. I took the inside and at that point I knew that the corner was mine. I braked late, and from that point on I knew I could do my race. Today the car was very fast: yesterday on the flying lap it was a pain, but it was probably positive for today. The car felt great on every compound, we managed the tyres well and that's why we managed to create such a big advantage. 12 wins in a row for the team are incredible, the last two seasons have been fantastic and we hope we can continue like this for a long time"

Max Verstappen

Behind the top 5, the two Ferraris also pipped by Russell!

Behind the top five we had another race, the one between the two Ferraris and George Russell's Mercedes - which, we recall, started from 18th position.

In fact, containing Perez was not feasible for the two Ferraris, while the fact that the Mercedes driver was slowed down by traffic for actually 30 laps gave the Prancing Horse drivers some hope of finishing the race in front of him.

Chronometric analysis of the race pace held by Russell (P6), Leclerc (P7) and Sainz (P8)

Chronometric analysis of the race pace held by Russell (P6), Leclerc (P7) and Sainz (P8)

As can be seen from the laptimes of the three (compared with the winner Verstappen, taken as a reference), George's second stint was much more competitive than Leclerc and Sainz: as initially mentioned, having started on Hard tyres, the Englishman was able to fit the more performing Mediums in the middle stint, and this also explains the advantage of around 1 second per lap over the two SF-23s.

When, in the third stint, the three got on the same compound (Medium again), the difference in performance was almost zero from lap 48 to 62: in that moment, George was 2.0 s behind Sainz, suggesting an ending without any twist.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

In hindsight, we can say that that pace wasn't manageable for Leclerc and Sainz, who in fact suffered from marked tyre degradation in the last 8 laps: their laptimes went up, and Russell passed them both.

"Today's result is beyond our expectations: we thought we could go for 11th in a typical race and seventh if we made the most of everything. I'm happy with how it went. The car was really fast and this is one of my favorite circuits. As a team, we usually do well here, so I had faith that we would be quick. Obviously I'm a little disappointed because I think we could have been up front, and with two cars in front the dynamics of the race would have changed completely. However, we increased the gap to the Aston Martin in the Constructors' Championship, so this result is good"

George Russell

To be precise, only the overtaking on Sainz took place on track; the reason why Leclerc also lost sixth place is that he had to serve a penalty of 5 seconds (added to his race time) for speeding in the pit lane. A mistake that ultimately changes little, in a difficult moment for Ferrari.

"We were optimistic about the simulator data, but unfortunately we have the simulations for our car, not the others: evidently they suited the track even better than us. We have to work a lot on the car's sensitivity to the wind, which is very difficult to manage. It's what we've been doing since the beginning of the year, we had a very difficult first part of the season [...] I'm not demoralized, I'll give everything until the last race. We are 200% motivated, unfortunately now we don't have the right car to do well, we have to be patient and hope that our time will come..."

Charles Leclerc

Another episode that brought some controversy was the timing of the second pit stop, which put Leclerc back in front of Sainz after a slow first pit stop (9.4 s) for the Monegasque.

Lacking ambitious goals, the 2023 season of Leclerc and Sainz is slowly turning into an internal struggle, mainly fed by the latter. The Ferrari fans have to hope that, should the situation improve - which at the moment seems difficult - they will work as a team instead of stealing points from each other for their own pride.

"There's not much to say, Charles had a slow pit stop and at the wall they opted for a swap to compensate: a shame, but what we have to worry about is the gap from Mercedes. McLaren is also ahead of us, we need to focus on ourselves and improve, because the rivals are making big steps forward. Today in the first 15 laps everything went as I wanted, attacking and making the Soft tyre last longer; however, once I put on the Hards for the longest stint of the race, our Grand Prix got compromised. As always happens, with stints longer than 20 laps we end up suffering degradation"

Carlos Sainz

The only partial consolation for Ferrari is that at the moment the form at Aston Martin is even worse, which gives some hope of being able to overtake them in the Constructors' Championship. In any case, keeping the current pace, McLaren is also set to overtake Ferrari in the standings...

Formula 1 immediately goes to Spa-Francorchamps for the Belgian Grand Prix

Not even the time to digest the verdicts of the Hungarian GP and Formula 1 immediately moves towards the legendary Spa, where the Belgian Grand Prix will take place. A legendary track that has given us races that are in the history of our sport, and which will mark the last event before the summer break.

From a technical point of view, the beauty of Spa lies in the setup compromise required: if the first and third sector favor higher top speeds, a generous amount of downforce is also needed to tackle the corners of the second sector, Pouhon and Stavelot above all. Before the usual Friday free practice analysis, I remind you that you can also find Race Analysis on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

See you soon!

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