Red Bull has no problem acknowledging that Ferrari has developed a car faster than their own for this Formula One World Championship. With this, you indirectly underline your ability to maximize the resources available to you, which are also not few. Any survey conducted by the ‘Paddock’ will show that ‘Il Cavallino Rampante”s car is the fastest of any measured on this track, even if the stats place the buffalo mark red up there. Already halfway through the calendar, Ferrari’s strategy has been disastrous on most Sundays, a general feeling and confirmed by the discussions on the radio that Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc have had publicly in recent days, with those responsible for them from the wall have led . In Hungary, the final date before the holidays, ‘Scuderia’ returned to keep the awkward air in the air when most factors meant a double was expected for those from Maranello. The management of the race, especially the tyres, made by the Italian team, kept its two drivers off the podium. Red Bull’s made a tiny gap through which Max Verstappen slipped, who clinched a win, the eighth of the course for him that seemed impossible before the start.
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At a track like the Hungaroring, which many consider the permanent Monaco due to the difficulty of overtaking, the current champion found his way to make up nine positions – he started tenth – and dived out of nowhere after a Ferrari spin and corner up and forcing him to use the connections that worked the worst for red cars. As if that weren’t enough, the tire changes didn’t go smoothly either, particularly in the case of the Spaniard, who was at the mercy of his teammate on the first visit to the pits (lap 17) and suspended on Hamilton’s second (on lap 47). . Lewis Hamilton (second) and George Russell (third) completed the second consecutive double podium for Mercedes, which with this result puts a solid lead on the lead Ferrari still holds (30 points) in the constructors’ standings. Sainz crossed the finish line in fourth and Leclerc in sixth, while Fernando Alonso finished eighth, also penalized by Alpine’s decision to fit his car with hard compounds, which performed the worst this Sunday compared to Friday and Saturday due to the temperature drop.
The efficiency of Red Bull and Mercedes contrasts with the ineffectiveness of Ferrari, which does not arrive right away and is well advised to use the break for deep self-criticism. No longer fighting for a title that Verstappen is increasingly tied to – he has an 80-point lead over Leclerc – but stepping up and trying to secure second place, which doesn’t come naturally when we consider the progression he showed Mercedes. Leclerc was leading the peloton when his structure decided to put hard tires on his prototype and his problems started there, something that was foreseeable given that others, like Alonso, were having a rough time with them. A week after the mistake that sent him to the gates in France while in the lead, the Monegasque fell victim to the withdrawal of his technicians, who left him utterly exhausted. “We make different decisions and we have to analyze that. Red Bull proved them right and we didn’t,” concluded Leclerc. Unlike the driver, Mattia Binotto, his director, preferred to focus on the car’s lack of punch, which he thinks is the key point. “This is the first time “We don’t have any speed in the race. We have to analyze why. We can discuss the strategy, but if the car doesn’t help the tires, we see the consequences,” commented Binotto.
“It was a crazy win. We proposed a very successful strategy and stopped at key moments, which allowed us to defeat many competitors. We were competitive, but it’s true that Ferrari also chose their tires poorly,” summarized Verstappen, who is already more than three Grands Prix ahead of his closest rival (Leclerc) after winning four of the last six tests.
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