Five Formula 1 Winners & Losers: Hungarian Grand Prix

Photo from Formula 1

Usually, tracks that don’t allow for much overtaking don’t make for the most exciting races.

But what Hungary lacked in on track overtakes, it made up for in strategy and, most importantly, drama.

Here are the winners and losers from the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Losers

5. Williams

Williams was chastised by driver Alex Albon for telling him to push for fast laps on his tires, before telling him to extend the stint and go longer than expected.

Two completely contradicting strategies, and one that hurts his race.

Albon was rightfully angry.

4. Daniel Ricciardo

Another driver screwed by his strategy was Daniel Ricciardo, who started the race on medium tires and was stuck behind those on soft tires.

Once the soft tire runners pit, he had open air to finally put those tires to work and get some pace.

Instead, RB decided to pit Ricciardo immediately after, completely ruining his strategy and keeping behind the same cars he was behind before.

It made absolutely zero sense to do so, and led to Ricciardo making up no ground and finishing 12th.

For a driver fighting for a seat next year, that has to be immensely frustrating.

3. Lance Stroll

You have to be a team player.

We’ll get to an excellent example of being a team player later, but you have to be one.

With under 10 laps to go, Aston Martin told Fernando Alonso to let Lance Stroll by so Stroll could chase after the RB car of Yuki Tsunoda, and was instructed that if Stroll could not pass, they would swap positions again before the end of the race so that Fernando could get the point for finishing 10th.

The problem is, Stroll didn’t give the place back.

He kept the point for himself.

The good news for Stroll is, Fernando Alonso is very understanding and quite the team player!

2. Max Verstappen

When Verstappen is on his game, there may be nobody in the sport better than him.

When he’s off his game? He’s messy.

Verstappen was angry at his engineers, angry at his strategy, divebombing into the side of Lewis Hamilton and coming home 5th.

If there is anything he needs to work on, and it certainly isn’t much considering how great he is, it’s keeping his cool when things aren’t going his way.

1. McLaren

How do you screw up a 1-2 finish?

After Oscar Piastri got past Lando Norris at the start, McLaren were headed to a sure fire 1-2 finish.

It wasn’t even up for debate.

And then, inexplicably, McLaren decided to give Norris the advantage on pit stops, putting Norris ahead of Piastri to “cover off Lewis Hamilton” (Hamilton was not close to being a threat to Norris).

Then they expected Norris, now leading the race and 2nd in the championship, to happily give the place back to Piastri and let his teammate win.

Norris didn’t for a while, leading to lots of uncomfortable team radio, but eventually relented, leading both drivers to be extremely unhappy on the podium.

It was mind numbingly stupid from McLaren to pit Norris before Piastri, and led to completely unnecessary team turmoil.

I’m still in awe about why it happened.

Winners

5. Netflix

This race may not have been super exciting on track, but it was INCREDIBLY exciting if you like Netflix’s F1 series “Drive To Survive”.

Team drama between McLaren, RB, and Aston Martin, added with Max Verstappen’s angry radio messages towards his race engineer, and this race alone might lead to 4 episodes of next season.

4. Yuki Tsunoda

Tsunoda had a nasty crash in qualifying.

One that left him with a bruised tailbone for the race.

Despite that, Tsunoda fought through the pain and brought home points, and was delighted on the radio afterwards.

That had to feel good.

3. Lewis Hamilton

Drivers consider 200 race starts a great Formula 1 career.

Lewis Hamilton on Sunday got his 200th podium finsh.

He’s unbelievable.

2. Lando Norris

I was fully prepared halfway through the race to put Norris in the losers section.

After all, this was the 5th time Norris put the car on pole position and the 5th time he failed to lead the first lap.

That’s shockingly bad.

However, he showed a lot of pace later on in the race, even catching his teammate Oscar Piastri.

Then, he drove away from Piastri after inheriting the lead due to the McLaren botched strategy job earlier.

He did not need to pull over for his teammate, and I would not blame him in the slightest if he didn’t.

But he did.

Painful as it may be, he played the team game when he really did not have to.

1. Oscar Piastri

But the winner of the day goes to Oscar Piastri, who not only got a better start than his teammate to get the lead, but managed his tires well to maintain the lead which has been one of his weak points of his Formula 1 career.

He deserved a triumphant end to his first ever victory.

Instead, he had a subdued and uncomfortable one.

But hey, a win is a win.

And it was a deserved one.