F1 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 12
FINISHING STRAIGHT
THE HUNGARIAN GP IN 5 KEY MOMENTS
1 Red Bull passes McLaren victory milestone
Not even a broken trophy – dislodged from its perilous position at the edge of the podium during the course of a Lando Norris ‘bottle slam’ – could throw a shadow over Max Verstappen’s win in Hungary, which took Red Bull to a record-breaking 12 consecutive victories. While team boss Christian Horner suggested he may send the bill to Norris (the ceramics take six months to make, at a cost of €40,000), GP Racing would humbly suggest he pitch up at BBC TV’s Repair Shop for an inexpensive fix. It may even make for an entertaining episode of Drive to Survive, something desperately needed in the absence of any serious competition for the championship this season.
Such is the RB19’s margin of superiority that it was inevitable it would surpass the iconic McLaren MP4/4’s 11 consecutive wins in 1988. Red Bull has indicated it is pivoting design resources towards next year’s car but arrived in Hungary with a raft of upgrades including new front and rear brake ducts, as well as revisions to the floor edges, engine cover and radiator inlets. Max blamed F1’s ‘Alternative Tyre Allocation’ experiment (a sustainability measure in which drivers have 11 rather than 13 sets of tyres for the weekend, and have no choice of compounds in qualifying) for preventing him from being able to fine-tune the new spec, but he missed out on pole because he didn’t stitch together a good enough lap, going 0.2s slower in his final run.
That opened the door for Lewis Hamilton to snatch pole by a mere 0.003s thanks to a sensational lap in which he left none of the struggling W14’s performance on the table. But it was business as usual once the lights went out on Sunday as Max seized the lead into Turn 1. Lewis also lost ground to the McLarens of Norris and Oscar Piastri, who started third and fourth, although he was able to poach fourth place from Piastri in the final stages after they had both been overhauled by Max’s team-mate Sergio Pérez.
In fact it was Piastri who led McLaren’s charge in the opening laps after passing his team-mate, only to lose that advantage when the team pitted Norris first to avoid being undercut by Hamilton at the first round of stops. Naturally this led to accusations of favouritism, but team boss Andrea Stella pointed out the logic of servicing Norris first: “You cover with the car that is more at risk, and then you cover with the other car. Lando’s out lap was just super, super quick, which meant Oscar lost the position. Our approach is to think about team first
