The Saturday in F1 Hungarian GP was tricky due to the weather conditions but McLaren stamped its authority against rivals who faltered.
The weather conditions played some role on Saturday of F1 Hungarian GP as qualifying saw mixed conditions making it tricky for the drivers and teams. Although there was no requirement of the intermediate tyre, but it will still hectic in terms of strategy.
Ultimately, McLaren stamped its authority with a 1-2 finish where Lando Norris’ first flying lap ended up being enough for him to take F1 Hungarian GP pole by 0.022s margin over teammate Oscar Piastri in an all-round performance by the team.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen had to be content with P3 finish after not electing to run post the red flag. The Dutchman is realistic of his ‘no win’ chances on Sunday, as teammate Sergio Perez had another nightmare after his own crash in Q1.
That little play cost Mercedes’ George Russell too as the Brit was quite angry with himself and his team who were a disaster. His teammate Lewis Hamilton ended up P5 but he barely scrapped though Q2, as admit to lack of pace behind McLaren and Red Bull.
They think they will be in the fight against Ferrari after Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz ended up in the mid-pack of the Top 10. The Aston Martin pair made merry in double Top 10, but Fernando Alonso did not likened the red flag timing and parc ferme happening.
Norris: “I mean, always pole positions are satisfying, I guess. So yeah, good. I think great for us as a team. We’re first and second. I don’t know when we’ve last locked out a front row. But yeah, great run for the team and tricky conditions to do it in especially. So not easy, but always good fun around here. And same time, as much as the conditions are difficult, it’s still fun out there. So yeah, some nice laps, especially my Q3 lap. I only had one set of new tyres. And we decided to put them on early just in case the rain came, which it kind of didn’t. I still wanted to, just in case any hope was there, but I didn’t really expect it to. And it’s just, yeah, you just want to be in the running in case something else happened. But I don’t think many people expected, like we’re all on old tyres, I don’t think anyone expected to go quicker, but it was just be there if we needed to be, that was all. But it was still have a good enough lap to stay on pole, so happy with it.
“I mean, I don’t think it’s, like, important. Every single quali is important. Every race is important. So it’s not all of a sudden I need to do it and I need to prove my point. I don’t. We’ve done the best we could in every race. I think we’ve shown great pace and great opportunities. And I know we’ve missed out on some. We don’t need to get back into all of that stuff. But yeah, I would love to have a clean, strong weekend. From yesterday already, we were very strong in the beginning in FP2, FP3 quali now. So it would be nice, yeah, just to have a nice Turn 1 and see what happens from there. But I’m not expecting it. I’m expecting still a difficult race with Oscar and Max behind. But every one is important. Every time we’re trying to maximise every place, every point. And yeah, the more we can try to get back on Max, the more we as a team can get on Red Bull and other constructors, the better. So no point or emphasis on trying to beat a particular someone or something. It’s just go out and do what we do because we’re doing a good job.”
Piastri: “Pretty smooth, yeah. I think, you know, the rain was a bit tricky at the start of Q1. You know, some of the kerbs were a bit wet and it was just enough rain that you couldn’t actually improve. And then DRS got disabled and then… It was a bit of a weird session. And from that point on, it was relatively smooth. But yeah, not the easiest of conditions. In the first lap of Q3, I made a massive mistake in Turn 4. Yeah, it was just a pretty poor lap. And yeah, the last lap was pretty solid. Of course, when you cross the line and see it’s so close you think of all the little things you could have done better.
“But honestly, it was a solid lap. There’s nothing I would massively change on it. So no, pretty happy with it. Obviously, the car’s been really quick this weekend and a good opportunity to win. I don’t think I’ve started this high up at Budapest before. It’s obviously a long run to Turn 1, and it gives an opportunity for the slipstream behind. Yeah, from starting fourth last year, I had a clean start and got to second. So I know that, you know, there’s a lot that can happen at Turn 1. Bottas, as you mentioned. So let’s see. I think, you know, I think get a good start and that always helps things. But it is a long run. And, you know, there’ll be other people involved, I’m sure.”
Verstappen: “It was alright, but not good enough. I mean, the whole weekend, just a little bit too slow. I mean, we tried to optimise everything, tried quite a few things, actually, with the car. And at the end, still too slow. So, yeah. That’s what it is. As for the steering banging, I’m not allowed to be frustrated? Yeah, that’s what happened. I don’t know at the moment for the race. But what can I do? I mean, we’ll try our very best. Try to have a good, stable balance with the car. And I hope if I find that, that I can follow them. But I don’t know. I mean, honestly, my long runs have been OK, but nothing fantastic or special.
“I think it’s better to be realistic than sitting here and spreading false hope. But yeah, we’ll see tomorrow. I mean, it’s what it is. For the updates, I mean, for sure they work, but we’re still not first, right? So we need more. It’s as simple as that. I mean, I think looking back at my qualifying, I was very happy with the laps, but yeah, balance wise, everything is really on the edge. I’m pushing as hard as I can. And then, of course, you have little moments here and there. I feel like I probably push harder than I did last year, but it’s just not coming anymore to have these great lap times. So I guess it just means that we are a bit slower. So we have work to do. Simple as that.”
Perez: “It was quite an impact, luckily it is all good. A bit of pain in the leg but it is all good, I am ready for the race. I lost it. I think I clipped the curve, and at that point it was raining harder in Turn 8. So when I exited the curve, it was quite late in the corner, and it just sent me off completely into the wall. It’s something that was so hard to judge the conditions. It was raining harder, but at the end we were not losing grip. I was improving my lap. I can say when you look at it, we were safe. We didn’t need to do the lap, but you always know a lot afterwards. It hurts, you know, that it happened again, especially in the run that I’m going through. But I’m determined to turn this around because I believe that yesterday we had a really good day, a very promising day. I think we have very good information on the long run.
“Hopefully tomorrow we can have some really good pace to come through the field and hopefully we can score some points. I am not worried. Like I said before, nothing changes. I think after qualifying everyone knows what to think at the time. However, with the information I have probably there was no need, and especially where we were, and the rain was picking up. But we went, and we paid the price. I was just on a good lap, but in hindsight, we didn’t need that lap. It’s something we will review. These conditions can catch out anyone out. But unfortunately it has been me. Two in a row. As I said, I’m determined to turn things around. It’s obviously quite hard to face all the media after these difficult moments, but when we get back to it, it will be even sweeter.”
Russell: “It was on me at the beginning. I didn’t think it was going to rain again so I just thought, ‘the track will get quicker’. I took it easy on lap one and suddenly it starts raining and that was the most important lap. But it didn’t matter, the end was the quickest and we had no fuel in the car to finish the session. No idea how that happened, and a total disaster. You can never take your eye off the ball. I think we need to have a proper sit-down as a team to understand what’s going on. We’ve got the car to be fighting for the top three, we shouldn’t be standing here out of Q1. Lewis only just scraped through into Q3. I’m really quite angry right now, because we’ve got such a fast car and we can’t be throwing away opportunities like this. We were over optimising. It’ll be a difficult race. We will still be able to come through, maybe fight for the top six, but from P16 it’s not going to be easy.”
Leclerc: “P6 is not a result I am happy with. My lap in Q3 was not the cleanest, but after the red flag, we knew it would be really hard to improve and we gave it a shot anyway. I think it was the best we could do today. Overall, we have to work on regaining the pace we had at the start of the season. Tomorrow, we will push to maximise our team points and we will see where that leads us.”
Alonso: “We have to be pleased with P7 and P8, both cars in Top 10 again on a circuit that we were little bit concerned if this was the circuit that would adapt to this package, so thanks to the new parts that we are little bit competitive, we found some pace and overnight also we did a lot of changes to accommodate the new package. I think the result is good, obviously points are given on Sunday. At the end, going into the pitlane, Lance and I were put into parc ferme, they closed the pitlane and put us into parc ferme. We got out of the car, then they told us that Q3 was going to restart. We got back in the car, they buckled us in, and because I had no more tyres, I didn’t go out again. I had been improving by a tenth and a half until that last corner when the red flag came out and it probably doesn’t change anything. But this going into the parc ferme, then opening it again and that doesn’t normally happen.”
It was joy for Visa Cash App RB drivers to make it in the Top 10 but it didn’t end well after a big crash for Yuki Tsunoda, who was worried about his car more than his body. The Japanese driver was left disappointed with the mistake which cost him places.
Teammate Daniel Ricciardo wanted more but was happy to be inside the Top 10 which both Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen thought was possible for them. They had to be content with Q2 along with Stake F1 Team’s Valtteri Bottas.
The Finn was happy with his lap but teammate Zhou Guanyu wasn’t, even though he did not have all the parts. The Williams pair of Alexander Albon and Logan Sargeant were also fine with Q2 result, even though they felt Q3 was possible.
The dampening mood was at Alpine when they elected not to venture out in Q1 post the red flag which eventually cost them a potential chance to make it into Q2. Esteban Ocon was quite disappointed with the strategy call that left him 20th on the grid.
Tsunoda: “To be honest, I felt great in the turn — I didn’t expect that! I just ran wide to be honest. Probably because I was on the limit. Ot’s obviously Q3, and half of the tire went on the grass — but to be honest with those kind of things, normally it happens. But probably because it was wet, it kind of exaggerated it, and I went wide. To be honest, until that corner – I mean, even Turn 5, the lap was great so it’s [a shame]. To be honest, I’m more worried about the car rather than my body. Very, very a shame – I’m disappointed. I hope my car is good and obviously I feel bad for the team. I think that lap was enough to go through probably in a really good position.”
Hulkenberg: “We were on the back foot, having to wait our turn and not squeeze in. It’s not great from where we are in the pitlane because we got compromised, but it’s really difficult to get the timing right anyway, it was too close for comfort today. Nonetheless, we crossed the line before the checkered flag and got our lap in, but it was certainly challenging. It wasn’t the pace that compromised me, it was the fact I only had used tires in Q2, we used them already in Q1 but without that, I would’ve sailed through.”
Bottas: “I am happy with how today went; I feel like we squeezed everything we could from the car and didn’t leave anything on the table – it is definitely a good feeling, and a step in the right direction compared to recent qualifying sessions. We were really close to Q3, actually a mere handful of thousandths away from it, which is good to see, and a confirmation that the new bits are working as expected. The track felt good in both sessions today, better than yesterday, which allowed us to be a bit more in the mix. Looking ahead to tomorrow, I feel we can be in a good place to fight for points; it’s rather difficult to overtake on this track, which should make defending rather okay – hopefully, we’ll also be able to attack and fight our way into the top ten – that has to be the target.”
Albon: “There was definitely more in it today; I got caught in dirty air for most of Q2 and as I was starting my lap, others were on their outlaps, so it was difficult with the traffic. You need everything to align around here, and we didn’t get the most out of it today, so it’s frustrating. It’s going to be a long race tomorrow with the degradation being quite high as we’ve seen from the F2 and F3 races, so there will be a lot of pit stops and just the battle for clean air which is vital around this circuit. It’s frustrating to finish the day like this but we’ll work with what we’ve got tomorrow.”
Ocon: “We were 10th when we were on track, and I am pretty sure we would have outperformed with this car in these conditions. We thought we were going to be 17th, 18th, 16th maybe at best this session, so we were going all in obviously for Q1. But we were 10th and 12th, so it was better than what we were expecting. We’ve done the right job up until now, but we were not out there when the conditions were at best. And it’s been two weekends in a row that we do these strategy mistakes. Three years ago, we were doing the right ones. Today, I don’t know what we do wrong, but it’s clearly not good enough, especially with the level of car performance that we have. We need to be doing things perfectly and today, we were going to be able to go through to Q2.
“The DRS was disabled, so that’s probably one of the topics that put the team a little bit out of thinking we are going to go out and improve. But, if you think about it, we are doing [1m]17.5 in P3. There was going to be room for improvement even if the DRS was disabled. I tried to remove the screen once I put it back in because then I need to see the cars what they are doing on track. I am in the car, I am thinking about the aero balance, the strategy, the brake balance for Turn 1, trying to see what the other cars are saying, what the other cars are doing in terms of lines in case it is damp somewhere.
“The call was strict and we didn’t go out, so I trusted the team. But probably things need to be different for the future. As a strategy we have in place, an improving track will always be a team call and a track getting worse will always be a driver call. Obviously we have the crossover lap time so it’s quite clear what tyres are best, what conditions the track is running in. So that’s something we’ve put in since 2020 and it’s been working every time since. But today hasn’t worked – I think 12th or 13th would have been possible.”
Here’s the crash: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2024-hungarian-gp-qualifying-pressure-mounts-on-perez-after-he-crashes-out-in-q1.1805109621590789529
Here’s how F1 Hungarian GP qualifying panned out
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