Luke’s Weekend Review – Hungarian GP 2024

On Lap 17 we see Mercedes pull the trigger first from the front runners to attempt the undercut and Hamilton pits from 4th and comes back out in 7th. A lap later we see McLaren respond with Lando as they bring him in to cover Hamilton off while Piastri came in one lap later on Lap 19 and the pair come out in 5th and 4th respectively ahead of Hamilton. Hamilton passes feedback on Lap 21 saying that the Hards definitely offered less grip than the mediums. Max Verstappen on Lap 18 comes on the radio saying how unhappy he was with the performance of the car and saying it is really bad. On Lap 22, Red Bull bring Max in to change tyres as we see Carlos Sainz follow him in and his teammate Leclerc was asking the team to consider “Plan C” which it was predicted to be the one stopper however it seems that the team decided against it as Leclerc also pits on Lap 24.

Carlos Sainz after his pits seem to have come out in 9th behind Perez and didn’t waste too much time behind the Mexican given that Sainz had way fresher tyres and on Lap 24 he was able to overtake into Turn 1, a Lap later he was able to pull the same move on Russell who at the time was still ahead of Perez. Sainz was still on the charge and recovering from the pit stop as on Lap 26 he also gets past Tsunoda to find himself behind his teammate in P6. In the midfield battle we see Fernando Alonso put pressure on Hulkenberg on Lap 26 as Alonso is really pushing and looks at a gap into Turn 4 however decided against it as the gap quickly disappeared. One Lap later however, Alonso went for a move into Turn 1 and Hulkenberg locks up in an attempt to defend which made him go wide and made Alonso’s life easier to get past. This mistake cost Hulkenberg 2 spots as immediately after Alonso made it past, Stroll was immediately putting Hulkenberg under pressure and on Lap 28 Stroll was able to also get past.

At Williams we hear Alex Albon having a bit of a go at his engineer as the team were being too indecisive as they let him know that they will be moving to Plan B and Albon didn’t appreciate this as it seems that he was nursing the Hard tyres for a one stop and said they are now dead. On Lap 29 we see Perez come in for his first stop as he goes onto the mediums and so did Gasly and Ricciardo as we see Perez come back on track in 15th while Gasly and Ricciardo come out in 19th and 20th.

On Lap 30 we see Leclerc put in fastest lap after fastest lap as he was the fastest man on track at the time due to his tyre offset, he had from the front runners. This however didn’t last long as after his pit to Mediums, Perez seemed to be on fire as he was flying through the midfield and rightly so given that he has one of the quickest cars on the track as by Lap 34, Perez was back into the points scoring positions. His teammate Verstappen starts pushing around the same time and starts closing his deficit to Hamilton on Lap 33 as Verstappen is now in DRS range to the 7-time World Champion. On Lap 35 Verstappen starts his attack and tries to go for a move into Turn 1 but he goes wide, and Hamilton manages to stay ahead. At the same time we see Norris close in on Piastri at the front due to Piastri going wide and loses some precious time to his teammate and on Lap 39, Norris gets the green light to fight his teammate for the lea. The battle with Hamilton on Verstappen was still ongoing and this was allowing Leclerc to close in on them while the McLarens to keep getting away from them.

On Lap 35, Gasly got the radio message every driver dread as he gets called into the pits to retire the car for the 2nd consecutive race as his car had some issues. This must have been heartbreaking for Gasly as he was having an ok race so far, but it wasn’t worth keeping the car out and risk further damage. Mercedes tried to play some mind games with Red Bull as on Lap 40 they call Hamilton into the pits but in the last moment, they ask him to stay out however on Lap 41 he does actually come in and so does Leclerc to cover off Hamilton and they both come out in 5th and 6th form 3rd and 5th.

This is where it all started to get interesting at the front, on Lap 42 McLaren tell Piastri that they won’t be pitting to cover Hamilton off as it was too early, but on Lap 45 the call Norris into the pits to cover Hamilton but also potentially undercut his teammate in the process. McLaren do come on the radio to advise Piastri of the situation and assure him that they will handle the situation insinuating that they will have team orders to swap the pair around. Norris does manage to come back out in front of Hamilton and by quite a bit as he was 6 seconds ahead. Piastri was called in 2 laps later on Lap 47 and comes out in 3rd behind Norris, Sainz pits as well to come back out in 6th and Perez seemed to have built a gap and pits from 8th to come back out in 8th. On Lap 48 we hear McLaren advise Norris that they would like to do the swap at his convenience, but we also see Piastri go wide on the Gravel of Turn 12 losing some more time to his teammate.

On Lap 49 we see Verstappen come into the pits for his final stop as he pits from 1st and comes out in 5th which didn’t make the Dutch driver happy as he has been undercut by quite a few drivers. Verstappen was going quite hard on the Medium tyres he just put on and on Lap 54 his engineer comes on to let him know that he is going fairly quick on these tyres, but Verstappen very rudely declines the request saying that he is making the best out of the bad strategy they gave him. After a few laps of battling with Leclerc, Verstappen was able to make a move into Turn 1 to get back in 4th and start chasing Hamilton. On Lap 62 Verstappen seems to have caught up with Hamilton and went for an attack into Turn 2 but Hamilton defends wisely, and Verstappen stays behind. On Lap 63 Verstappen goes for another move, this time in Turn 1 as the pair had just gone past a back marker and Verstappen brakes super late and locks up, his car goes straight and goes over the front wheel of Hamilton with his rear throwing Verstappen airborne before the car lands back and he goes out wide. Luckily neither driver picked up any damage but the incident was noted by the stewards and will be investigated after the race. After the investigation, stewards deemed it as a racing incident and neither driver got punished.

Meanwhile at the front, Norris had still not swapped back with Piastri and despite the multiple messages that his engineer kept giving him, he kept actually opening the gap to Piastri and Piastri didn’t seem to have an answer for Norris. Norris’s engineer kept telling him that he was pushing too hard on Turns 4 and 11 trying to slow him down but this was not working, He then kept reminding him of all the Sunday morning meetings they have and that he also can’t win the Championship by himself and he will need the team and also Piastri in the future. Norris does respond by asking them to ask Piastri to catch up but despite his best efforts he couldn’t match Norris’s pace. Piastri comes on the radio and says that the longer the team leaves it the riskier it gets, and Norris’s engineer once more gets on the radio saying that if there is a Safety Car, it will be virtually impossible to do the swap.

That last comment seemed to have come through to Norris as on Lap 68 we see him slow down on the Start/Finish straight so that he will let Piastri through and obey team orders. Talking about team orders we completely missed out that Aston Martin also pulled team orders on Alonso to let Stroll by to try and overtake Tsunoda for 9th and if unsuccessful, Stroll will concede 10th back to his teammate but due to the drama in front, this was completely missed and in the end Stroll didn’t swap back despite him not being able to get past Tsunoda. Given the amount of times Alonso was a team player to Stroll, this wasn’t very nice to be paid back like this.

In the end we do see Oscar Piastri taking the chequered flag for the first time in his F1 career followed by his teammate Lando Norris, Lewis Hamilton, Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez, George Russell, Yuki Tsunoda and Lance Stroll forming the Top 10. It was worth noting Perez’s recovery drive as he managed to finish in 7th after starting in 16th. This was also the first time McLaren got a 1-2 finish since 2021 in Monza. Oscar Piastri also bags the driver of the day for his impressive drive and first ever win in F1 while Fastest Lap went to George Russell.

Who do you think where the biggest winners and biggest losers of the Hungarian GP? Join us next week as we now head to Spa for the Belgian GP.