The Hungaroring has provided good racing in the last years, mainly thanks to unpredictable weather and a jumbled qualifying session, with top Verstappen and others starting behind the usual spots.
Ferrari threw away another victory, or at least a chance to fight for it, with idiotic strategies once again, dooming Leclerc race with the white tyre at the first pit stop, against the driver’s feedback and the output from the earlier stint from Alpine, which was visible and understood by everybody.
The World Titles were already gone, but this is not a good reason to constantly fail easy decisions at Maranello.
As discussed in other posts, too much politics is moving the wrong persons at the top in the F1 team management, chewing top drivers and screwing up designs and upgrades.
Red Bull and Mercedes are just thanking them, with the Austrians making a decisive stretch in both standings, and the Germans finding themselves in an open battle for the runner-up positions despite having had a much slower car for 13 races!
On the drivers side, Leclerc again proved to be at the right level to fight for the big prize while Sainz suffered again both in qualifying and race pace.
Verstappen is in the form of his life and he’s in a phase of his career where he always obtains the maximum in any circumstance, making a good driver like Perez look like an average one, saddling him with big gaps.
Hamilton and Russell are more even and are benefiting the upgrades of their Mercedes, which are coming constantly and delivering improvements quickly.
Alpine and Mclaren are picking up the crumbs, while all other teams seem lost and resigned to be too far to fight, maybe already preparing upgrades for next year; only Aston Martin are still investing time and effort to get back up.
On a more general basis, I wanted to express my disappointment for the huge influence that small temperature changes make on cars performance; I hope that Formula 1 will reopen the tyre supply to more competitors as I believe this will reduce the crazy behaviours of the Pirelli tyres, which I suspect is sometimes steered to re-shuffle performances.
Furthermore, I’m very curious to see the result of the rules change starting from the next GP in Spa, as I was hoping after the Netflix-oriented last season that we would have left behind all the off-track drama, useless team radio, interviews by Team Managers and rules lobbying but apparently even the new ownership hasn’t changed the American approach of show-at-all-costs.
Finally, I want to dedicate few lines to Sebastian Vettel, who also made a great race on Sunday, but got the whole attention already on Thursday when he announced his retirement from Formula 1 at the end of this season.
It’s a big loss for the sport and the paddock, not only because he’s a great driver, but even more due to his passion and personality: he truly understands the true values of motorsport and Formula One, embraces and respects its heritage, being a great ambassador for them; moreover he’s positively highlighting important social and environmental topics to the world, using Formula 1 as a platform, but in a positive and genuine way, rather than the usual bogus and plastic one typical of celebrities, including other drivers.
Most of his ideas are aligned with my proposal both for the on-track and off-track development of an important sport and business like Formula One.
With him leaving, one final chance to see them even partially introduced has disappeared.
Maybe we’ll never have the chance to chat about it, but I hope he’ll take a role within the motorsport world to try to keep these values alive.
All Along The Racetrack 