Hungarian Grand Prix race analysis

Starting with this race-Monday, a young F1 enthusiast and fan from Delhi, Malhaar Khaladkar, will do an analysis of the race weekend, every Monday after the F1 race.

By Malhaar Khaladkar*

New Delhi, 20 July 2020: Rain before the start of the race meant that the track was wet. Therefore, the whole grid started on the intermediates, barring two cars of Magnussen and Romain Grosjean which started on the wets. Verstappen crashed his car in turn 12 during the lap to the grid. He managed to recover his car on to the grid but damaged the suspension and front wing. Red Bull mechanics had a monumental task to get the car ready before the start, they did so with 20 seconds remaining.

Mercedes were expected to dominate given their qualifying pace. Behind them were the Racing Points and Ferraris. Verstappen was looking to make up ground after an underwhelming qualifying. Behind him were two McLarens and the sole Alpha Tauri of Gasly. Ricciardo and Russel started in P11 & P12 respectively. Albon had a torrid time on Saturday being the only 13^th. Behind him was the other Renault and Williams. Haas had cars in P16 & P18, Kvyat slotting between them and Alfa Romeo occupied the last row.

As the formation lap ended, both Haas’s pit for slick tyres which turned out to be an excellent decision. Kvyat wanted to do the same but he was instructed to stay out. Hamilton arguably had the best start and behind him was Stroll in turn 1. Bottas jumped the start and then bogged down, getting overtaken by 5 cars. Cars starting on the right side of the circuit had worse starts compared to cars starting on the left i.e. on the racing line. Nicholas Latifi in the Williams was running P10 after a quick start.

By Lap 5 everyone had switched to slick tyres with Hamilton in the lead. Verstappen overcut Stroll to be in P2, while the strategy gamble by Haas at the start meant that Magnussen and Grosjean were running P3 & P4 for a brief time. Leclerc struggled with the degradation on his soft tyre compared to the medium tyres of other cars. Due to strategy, his race was compromised. Both McLarens lost time while pitting, thus, ran outside of the points-paying position. Raikkonen in his Alfa Romeo ran in P11 briefly before being handed a 5-second time penalty for starting on the wrong grid slot.

The expected rain did not arrive and passed to the south of the circuit. Around lap 29 the second round of pitstops occurred with Vettel putting on the hard tyres. Others followed in till lap 37 for either the medium or the hard tyres. Bottas caught up to Verstappen in P2 but was unable to pass him as following another car at this circuit is very difficult. Meanwhile Hamilton had a 22 second, over a pit stop lead to Verstappen.

Mercedes executed a very similar strategy to last year as they pit Bottas on lap 49 for a set of hard tyres to hunt down Verstappen for last 21 laps. Bottas did catch him with two laps to go, but was unable to pass him. Hamilton took a free pitstop on lap 66 to switch to soft tyres and gun for the fastest lap of the race. He set a track record of 1:16.627 on the last lap.  Lance Stroll achieved the highest position of the season with P4. Behind him were the second Red Bull of Albon and Vettel. Perez recovered to P7 after a bad start and Ricciardo finished in P8 in his Renault. Haas achieved first points of the season as Magnussen finished P9 on road, but got demoted to P10 after both Haas cars were awarded a time penalty of 10-seconds due to using driver aids on formation lap. Sainz was P9, maintaining McLaren’s record of finishing in top 10 in Hungary since the turbo hybrid era. Leclerc due to bad strategy missed out on points. Behind him were Kvyat, Norris and Ocon. Both Alfa Romeo and Williams lacked pace to challenge the top 10. Gasly was the sole retirement in the race due to power unit problems.

The Hungarian GP proved that the Mercedes W11 was strong at low downforce circuits i.e. Austria and high downforce circuit like Hungary. They are the class of the field. Behind them Racing Point have shown better understanding of their car and improvement in pace. They outqualified both Red Bulls and matched them in race pace. The favourite contenders for the win, Red Bull had balance issues the whole weekend. The car understeered in some corners and oversteered in others. This was evident in their qualifying pace. They had much better race pace as Verstappen was able to fight off Bottas and Albon was able to overtake Vettel on track. Their upgrades, specifically the rear wing endplates and floor did not give them the gains they expected and worsened the balance of the car.

The Ferraris were much improved this weekend. They got both cars in Q3 and one finished in P6. If they had got the strategy right, both cars could have finished in the points. This track inherently suited their car with lack of straights and twisty corners. Ferrari front wing and floor upgrades seemed to improve their pace marginally as the balance and pace of the car improved. McLaren had predicted they would struggle after Friday as the car was having balance issues through the weekend. Due to this, neither of the driver was comfortable with the car and was able to extract maximum pace. Renault once more finished in P8 showing signs of improvement in the closely packed midfield. Ricciardo put a mammoth 40+ laps stint on the medium tyres which gave him the tyre offset in the second stint. The tyre advantage wasn’t enough for him to overtake as the Renault is not the outright fastest car in the midfield.

Alpha Tauri could’ve scored points with Gasly but they were struck with reliability gremlins. Haas achieved points and outraced one of the Ferrari cars due to good strategy. On pure pace, they would not have achieved points. Alfa Romeo is arguably the slowest car in qualifying while their race pace is not encouraging either. Williams have improved their qualifying pace immensely mixing it with the midfield and George Russel out-qualifying a Red Bull. They still lack race pace but as evident from qualifying it’s a matter of when they unlock it rather than if they have the pace.

*Malhaar Khaladkar is an intern with INDIAinF1 and will be writing on F1 and technical aspects of the sport. The passionate student is also a keen student of the sport. This is his first article. We invite your comments below.