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Max Verstappen battles back for 2 precious points in Hungary
It was a chaotic race once again in Budapest and another first-lap incident saw Red Bull Racing Honda enter the summer break with plenty of frustration, but time on their side.
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Rain, chaos, a red flag, title rivals at the back of the field, blazing sunshine, a post-race disqualification of a podium finisher and a first-time Formula One race-winner – Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix had a little bit of everything and a bit more on top. When the dust settled on the craziest race F1 has seen for some time, Alpine's Esteban Ocon stood atop the podium for the first time in his 78th start, while Red Bull Racing Honda and Max Verstappen were left to count the cost of a day that went pear-shaped through no fault of their own.
After the lead-up to race day at the Hungaroring had been punctuated by soaring summer temperatures that saw the track surface nudge 60°C in qualifying, a rain shower hit the circuit 20 minutes before the start of Sunday's 70-lap race and produced immediate chaos.
Pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton led into Turn 1, but behind him, Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas misjudged his braking into the first corner, setting off a chain of events that reshaped the world championship standings.
With carbon fibre and wrecked cars strewn across the circuit, a red flag was inevitable, with Norris, Bottas, Pérez and Leclerc – third through sixth in the Drivers' Championship – all out on the spot. Verstappen and Ricciardo soldiered on, the Red Bull in particular missing a significant chunk of its floor. The race stewards took a dim view of Bottas's actions, issuing the Finn a five-place grid penalty for the upcoming race in Belgium. Stroll also copped a five-place penalty for the next race for his own misjudgement.
Ocon (who started eighth) and Aston Martin's Sebastian Vettel (10th) picked their way through the opening-lap mess with some improvisational brilliance allied with a smattering of good fortune and the Frenchman resisted the pressure piled upon him by the four-time world champion German to take a memorable maiden victory that will be talked about for years to come.
For Vettel and Aston Martin, there was a sting in the tail – four hours after the race, he was disqualified from the results when the stewards were unable to take the required fuel sample from his car for review. Competitors must ensure that a one-litre sample of fuel can be taken from the car after the event; only 0.3L was able to be extracted from the Aston Martin, prompting Vettel's exclusion from the results.
Due to Vettel's disqualification, Hamilton salvaged second place after his race looked shot when the field took the formation lap for the race restart. With the sun shining, every other driver immediately dived into the pits for dry-weather tyres rather than take the start proper, leaving Hamilton as the only driver on the grid when the lights went out. He pitted on the next lap, fell to last and spent the remainder of the race recovering positions, and may well have won were it not for the brilliant defending of Ocon's team-mate Fernando Alonso, who resisted Hamilton's faster car for 10 laps as the race wound down.
With Vettel removed from the results, Ferrari's Carlos Sainz inherited third place.
Second place and 18 points for Hamilton on a day where Verstappen managed to drag his damaged car around for ninth place and two championship points saw Hamilton reclaim the series lead by eight points, while in the Constructors' Championship, Red Bull Racing Honda fell to 12 points behind Mercedes.
Here's how a madcap race played out at the Hungaroring.
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Verstappen laments "freak moments"
One race after his controversial crash at Silverstone, where he and Hamilton came together battling for the lead on the first lap, Verstappen was well placed to strike in Hungary after qualifying third. The pre-race shower scuppered his plan to take the fight to Mercedes on the faster, softer-compound Pirelli tyre in the dry, but he was perfectly placed to sit behind Hamilton on the run to Turn 2 – a preferred passing spot at the narrow Hungaroring circuit – before he was pinballed by Norris into the first corner, the McLaren sent into his path by Bottas's mistake.
The half-hour red flag period saw Verstappen's mechanics frantically repair what they could of his battered car. After re-joining the resumed race in 13th place, the Dutchman had a big battle with the Haas of rookie Mick Schumacher before settling in behind old team-mate Ricciardo, the pair of them making do with compromised cars as they tried to salvage something out of the weekend.
Verstappen finally made it past the McLaren with nine laps to go, but was understandably less than impressed that he had just two points to show from his past two Sundays.
"Again taken out by a Mercedes, so that's not what you want," Verstappen said after spending just 19 of the 70 laps inside the top 10. "From there onwards, I was missing the whole side of my car, the barge board area. The floor was damaged as well, so it was almost impossible to drive to be honest. I still tried my very best and I scored one point, so it's at least something.
"There's a lot of freak moments at the moment, which cost us a lot of points, so we'll see. Mercedes are very quick, but we will never give up. We will focus on ourselves, keep pushing and we'll see where we end up."
10th in a battered car earned Verstappen plenty of plaudits
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While "massively frustrated" by a second consecutive race with significant crash damage, Red Bull Racing Honda team principal Christian Horner was keen to look further ahead, with 12 rounds of the 23-race season still to run.
Horner was left to lament another costly Sunday for his team
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"He's run with half a car, the entire right-hand side of the barge board was missing… that's brutal for us," Horner said. "Max fought and that could prove vital at the end of the year."
One crumb of comfort for Red Bull? Verstappen's Lap 41 pit stop was timed at just 1.8 seconds – the fastest single pit stop of the entire season.
More pain for Pérez
Silverstone, where he had a spin in Sprint Qualifying and finished 16th in the race, was hard to take for Verstappen's team-mate Sergio Pérez, who could at least look in the mirror for the cause of his disappointment at the British Grand Prix. Hungary was a different story, though.
Fourth on the grid and ready to weigh-in on the title fight at the front, the Mexican was an innocent bystander in the first-lap mess, left with nowhere to go as Bottas's Mercedes speared left after clattering into Norris. Pérez tried to limp back to the pits for repairs as the race was red-flagged, but hard to park up on the way to Turn 12.
Retaining fifth in the Drivers' Standings after both Norris and Bottas also went no further was a small moment of positivity on a day that was over before it really begun.
Sergio Pérez was lost for words after his early exit
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"I don't even know what to say," Pérez said. "It's clear that Bottas made a big mistake and just took everyone out of the race. It's a big shame and a massive blow for us as a team. We also lost the engine very likely, so that's not ideal. It's a big penalty on our side."
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Gasly plays his part, Tsunoda's shining moment
Pierre Gasly's late charge earned him an extra point
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Right behind him was rookie team-mate Yuki Tsunoda who, like Ocon and Vettel, expertly picked his way through the first-corner mess to climb to fifth from 16th on the grid when the race was red-flagged. The Japanese driver spent every one of the 70 laps inside the top 10, ran as high as fourth in the early stages and finished a career-best sixth after Vettel's disqualification.
Happy faces in Hungary
How surreal was Sunday in Budapest? At the end of the race, first-time victor Ocon mistakenly didn't enter the pits after his victory lap, only realising he needed to stop after passing the pit-lane exit and having to abandon his Alpine, running back up the pit lane to find the podium. At the other end of the pits, Vettel was also on foot, the German's Aston Martin running out of fuel as he celebrated what was, at the time, a second-place finish.
There were joyous faces at Williams, too. The one-time giant of F1 has fallen on hard times in recent years, so seventh place for Nicholas Latifi (his first world championship points) and eighth for team-mate George Russell was celebrated like a victory for a team that hadn't scored a single point since Germany in 2019, 38 races ago.
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Next stop: Spa
With 11 races of the scheduled 23 for 2021 in the books, it's time for F1 to take a deep breath and a three-week hiatus for the summer break. A mid-season pause is well-earned at any time, but particularly this year, given the top teams are balancing a title fight with developing an all-new car for the changing regulations set to kick-in next year.
But after that break? Stock up on popcorn and block out your Sunday afternoons. The Belgian Grand Prix on August 29 kick-starts a sprint to the finish, as the opening leg of a triple-header that takes in the return of F1 to the Netherlands for the first time since 1985 with the Dutch Grand Prix on September 5 and the final stop for a manic three weeks coming at Monza for the Italian Grand Prix on September 12.
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