The English reigning world champion dominates the race with his Mc Laren: Leclerc and Hamilton finish in fourth and fifth place. Vasseur criticizes himself, Lewis disputes the choices of the wall
After the domination of Mercedes with eight victories and Ferrari’s attempt to question the leadership of the silver arrows with two successes, the Formula 1 World Championship also finds the reigning world champion Lando Norris and his Mc Laren. The Englishman who had also won pole position wins as absolute dominator on the Hungaroring circuit with only one moment of difficulty when at the start after having burned Leclerc’s Ferrari, he was overtaken by teammate Oscar Piastri. But then in the 70 laps of the Hungarian Grand Prix he proved to be the fastest, winning clearly ahead of Max Verstappen and Kimi Antonelli. The podium rewards the three best drivers, speaking of Norris, it is worth highlighting Max’s race who drove a car with performances clearly similar to Ferraris and yet it was first managed to overtake Hamilton on the track with an amazing overtaking and then to maintain second position thanks to the courageous choice to focus on red tires while Hamilton and Leclerc prudently chose white ones. And then Kimi Antonelli’s comeback that after the penalty in practice and the start from the fourth row he focused on a single stop and he even toyed with the idea of never stopping in the pits. It was probably team manager Toto Wolf who pushed him to stop, but returning to the track ahead of Hamilton, the Italian driver retained third place without any problems, also due to the penalty later imposed on Lewis. In the end, Kimi said he was satisfied with what he had done: “It was a difficult race also from a physical point of view. We wanted to try with just one stop, but we stopped because we were at our limit. In the end, it went well like that. I am very happy because this result is the best way to go on holidaybut we have to keep pushing: our opponents are getting closer and the second part of the championship will be very tough”
Ferrari disappointment
The predictions from the day before were proven wrong once again who considered Ferrari to be the big favorite as on the eve of Monte Carlo. It wasn’t a lucky weekend for the Reds, starting with the mockery suffered by Hamilton in official practice and then yet another penalty and then the unfortunate start of Charles Leclerc who found himself in fifth position from the front row after the start. Neither Hamilton nor Leclerc have ever shown that they have the pace of Norris’ Mc Laren: Lewis fought to snatch third place from Antonelli without succeeding and then yet another five-second penalty relegated him to fifth place behind his teammate by just 7 tenths. And Vasseur doesn’t make excuses for Hamilton: “Today it’s a fact. We were 8.6 km/h over the limit in the pit lane. It’s not a huge infringement, but it’s still over the limit. The speed measurement is automatic: it’s black or white.” Hamilton assumes all responsibility. “The last race was my fault and today it was my fault too. So I have nothing to reproach the team for.” The Englishman, however, criticizes the race strategies: “Today I think that we shouldn’t have made an extra stopbecause we gave up second place, we lost track position and I didn’t understand why.” However, Lewis doesn’t see everything as black: “We have made good progress. But I think this weekend Charles and I knew we had a car to put in the top three. Instead we finished fourth and fifth. It wasn’t a perfect execution.” Vasseur analyzes the grand prix: “Not a good result, no doubt. When you finish first and second on Friday, you expect much more than a fourth (with Leclerc) and fifth place. It was too chaotic a race for us: bad start, then the penalty to Lewis, the pit stop which wasn’t perfect and a slightly chaotic pace between one car and another. It’s true for us, but I think it was partly the same for others too. It’s difficult to interpret the race, because Max did 37 laps on the soft tires. The conditions were the same for everyone and we must minimize errors. We didn’t do that today. We did the double, but on Friday. Not today. Today was not a good day. We’ve made too many mistakes, made too many wrong decisions and we were the only ones to lose position on the track with Verstappen. Not everything went in the right direction. The pace was decent, but the level of competition is so high that it doesn’t allow any margin. On a track like this, as soon as you lose position, it becomes almost impossible to recover.”
Mc Laren raises its head again
With Norris’s victory in Hungary, Mc Laren enters the title race. “I have to thank the team for this victory – said the winner –. It certainly helps me in view of the second part of the championship and the whole team should be proud, because they are doing an amazing job with the updates brought here. Let’s continue like this”. The only negative note of the papaya day is represented by the withdrawal of Oscar Piastri. In the standings Antonelli now has 219 points, followed by Hamilton on 169, Russell 160, Leclerc 138, Norris 128 and Verstappen 109.
