The 2018 Formula 1 Hungarian GP wasn’t a blinder but it was intriguing how the different strategies were played out in the 70-laps race as Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton took the win.
The British driver started on pole and went on to win the Hungarian GP to build a 24 points advantage over second placed Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, heading into the summer break. The German looked good to take the fight to Hamilton at one stage.
However, he was stuck behind Valtteri Bottas for too long to take any advantage of his different strategy, thus ending second with Kimi Raikkonen scoring yet another podium. Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo was fourth as Bottas was demoted to fifth.
How did the weekend pan out statistically? Here’s some of them:
- It was Hamilton’s 67th career win and 46th for Mercedes in all, while Mercedes as a team scored its 81st victory. Hamilton took his fifth win of the season to go one better than Vettel, who has four.
- Hamilton won the Hungarian GP for the sixth time in his career (2007, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2018). He has six wins in two more grand prixs in Canada (2007, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017) and USA (2007, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017).
- It was Hamilton’s 110th outing for Mercedes, the same number of races he did for McLaren. With McLaren he scored 21 wins, 49 podiums and 26 poles while with Mercedes he has 46 wins, 77 podiums and 51 poles already.
- Saturday’s pole was Hamilton’s fifth of the season and 77th in career. It was also his sixth at Hungaroring as it became the fifth grand prix where Hamilton has six poles after Canada, China, Italy and Britain. Hamilton also extended his pole and win in same race record to 43 with next best is Michael Schumacher with 40 and Vettel with 31.
- Raikkonen scored his 99th podium whereas Hamilton’s was 220th and Vettel’s 106th. It was also the 399th podium finish for a German driver.
- This was also Raikkonen’s eighth podium of the season, surpassing last year’s seven. The last time Raikkonen scored eight podiums which included a win was in 2013 with Lotus. He now also holds the record of nine podiums in Hungarian GP and extended his third placed podium record to 43.
- Hungary’s double podium for Ferrari meant, the team has 15 podiums this season with Vettel and Raikkonen – including wins – to Mercedes’ 14 with Hamilton and Bottas. It was also Ferrari’s fourth double podium of the season, going one better than Mercedes.
- Ricciardo took the 4th fastest lap of the season, surpassing Bottas who has three while Max Verstappen has two and one each for Hamilton, Vettel and Raikkonen.
- There were 20 recorded overtakes in the race and 20 pit stops as well.
- Haas scored its first points in Hungarian GP in three attempts and it was only their fourth career double points finish.
- This was the fourth race in succession where Red Bull scored with only the one car. The last time it happened was in the 2008 season.
- Fernando Alonso scored for the eighth time this season and it was his fourth successive eighth place finish.
- Sergey Sirotkin remains the only driver to still to score in 2018.
- Nico Hulkenberg matched Derek Warwick’s record with most race starts without a win at 147. Warwick though has 162 entries, while Hulkenberg has 149 entries.
- In qualifying, it was the first time both the Toro Rosso drivers made it into Q3 since Australia 2017 and first time since Spain 2015 that both the Force Indias dropped out of Q1. It was also the end of Charles Leclerc’s run of eight Q2 entries.
- Bottas got two penalty points for colliding with Ricciardo which took his total to 10, but only has two currently on his licence.
The stats were compiled by Darshan Chokhani and Jack Ekeller