Hungarian GP: Martin Brundle on the struggles “ painful ” by Lewis Hamilton and the victory of Lando Norris’ ‘Critical’ | F1 News

It was an intriguing and sometimes confusing event in Budapest, with a race that initially required a certain patience of the spectator, but we were all rewarded at the end.

Thanks to the practice and the early stages of qualification, it appeared that McLaren would simply dominate on a lap and in the race. But as the Top 10 Top 10 shooting finale started, shortly after pop-up rains had appeared, the direction and the force of the wind changed, and the surface temperatures dropped so that the McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris lost half a second compared to their best Q2 efforts.

This opened the door to Charles Leclerc in his Ferrari to steal pole position in an impressive style, McLaren queuing right behind him and advantage Piastri in the battle of the championship against Norris. It was the top 10 closest to the 75th anniversary grid of Formula 1 history, covered with a little more than half a second.

George Russell was an impressive fourth and was disappointed because he thought that the post was possible in his Mercedes, who had returned to a concept of anterior rear suspension and looked much more competitive around this chain of tortuous and endless corners.

I will cover more on the race for the victory shortly, but in the meantime, a surprise all weekend was the Aston Martins of Fernando Alonso and launches Stroll, who suddenly looked at the pace and were in fact standing on the road. They would align fifth and sixth on the grid and finish the fifth and seventh. Alonso led a particularly intelligent race, completely holding a pack behind him when it suited him to save his tires, then making a gap when he was ready for his first and only stop at the stand at the 39th round of 70.

The increasingly impressive Gabriel Bortoleto led his Sauber between the two astoners in sixth place and won the fans’ pilot. I suspect that he has learned a lot from his co-management Alonso, he certainly applies it well and is a great monitoring for the future.

“Painful to watch Hamilton Struggle”

I can’t wait to write this next section, it is Lewis Hamilton, who endured what had to be one of the worst weekends in his career, in and out of the car. He fought for the ultimate rhythm of qualifications, and with the peloton so close that he would only start 12th when his teammate Leclerc was on the pole. He would then describe himself as “useless” in the interviews after the qualification and suggested that the team should change the driver. It would be better not to be said, but he obviously wanted to punish himself openly.

He is clearly in a difficult place, and during the race, he would end in the same 12th position, never really showing signs of progress. He sat in the car of the park farm after the race for what seemed an age, was again very down-bat in the interviews, then refused to attend a steward investigation into a rather ambitious movement Max Verstappen made on him during the blind race and the blind turns, in which Lewis chose to get out of the road to avoid contacts. He did not want to contest the incident and conceded via his team, but Max attended the meeting with a rational explanation from his point of view, and avoided a penalty.

Summer holidays could not be more timely for Lewis to have a reset. It is painful to observe this great champion in so many conflicts, and we must expect him to resist the storm and return to the form given his talent and his experience, but otherwise I simply cannot see him bear two additional seasons in Ferrari, or elsewhere, like this.

Leclerc in the other Ferrari was also unhappy but for very different reasons. He superbly put pole position and had an excellent rhythm in the opening passage, even moving away from Piastri. However, his rhythm has dropped more and more as the race progressed, and his anxious radio calls were all about him to have managed the expected car problems differently.

Here’s what I think it could be. This Ferrari works much closer to the ground, especially at the back, and we often see it strongly towards the bottom. This can bring the “board” below and make the car illegal, as happened in China earlier this year.

We know that they sometimes raise the accelerator in high -speed corners to protect this wear when the car is highly loaded aeromed. In Budapest at his stops, they raised tire pressures, which raises the car but gives the grip, and the team also reduced the allemence angle. This harmed at his own pace, and Leclerc finally finished 42 seconds angry behind the winner, who included a five -second penalty for hitting Russell in first when he had passed for the last stage of the podium. Charles only won once from his last 16 poles.

Verstappen did not have a lot of day, his red bull lacking rhythm as soon as his tires overheated. He started eighth and finished ninth, as well as the unworthiness of being behind his teammate in the short term earlier in the season, Liam Lawson, who led the car of the Bulls Sister Racing in a beautiful eighth place. Difficult days to Red Bull.

“ Peach of a passage “gives Norris” critical “victory

This left McLaren to fight for the first and second place to ensure the 200th victory of the F1 team, and the fourth consecutive one two. On this occasion, it was Norris who won, but you would never have imagined that at the end of the first round where he had dropped two places in fifth behind Russell and Alonso.

Lando had a decent getaway, but after having left through the track a few times, then heading for the favorites inside, he was behind his teammate Piastri and was rather careful on the brakes and lost.

Ironically, it earned him the race because, McLaren had to develop strategies for having finally managed to go to Piastri beyond Leclerc, opting for a race for two stops on the 18 and 45 rounds – including a model to try to force Ferrari to walk, which worked.

Back in fourth place with not much to lose, McLaren asked Norris if he wanted to adapt to tires with hard compound, to convert in a single blow and to drive until the end. He would probably finish third anyway if it didn’t work. He easily accepted and they extended it to the 31st round, and thus opposing some 13 laps later than his teammate and now the only rival of the Piastri championship.

Norris, taking the lead when Piastri opposed the second time, then led a fishing of a passage of 39 laps with a large rhythm, but in a way preserving its tires in reasonable shape. It was now clear that Piastri would catch him with a handful of laps to do, since he was on the same complex but much fresher.

And so it happened, with three laps to go Piastri sent his car inside Norris in the first round, on what seemed to be an Smight for its braking reference point. A tour later, he did it for real, but Norris was already turning when he arrived, and the young Aussie had to lock his brakes in avoidance and simply saved in the back of Norris.

This 200th victory of the team almost had to wait, but everything was fine, and that gave Norris the little snifflard he needed, and a glorious and well -deserved victory was his. It was a critical moment because if Piastri had passed it, it would have been a 14 -point swing. As it stands, only nine points separate them with everyone to play, and the rest of the season after the break is perfectly ready.

Formula 1 returns after the summer holidays with the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort on August 29-31, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with now – no contract, cancel at any time