With Charles Leclerc throwing away an opportunity to take more points out of Max Verstappen’s championship advantage in Paul Ricard last weekend, there is only one more chance for him to claim back some momentum before the summer break.
But while the championship battle out front appears to be becoming increasingly one-sided, the midfield battle over sixth place looks to be heating up with Haas bringing their first major upgrades package of the season to the Hungaroring.
Here are the talking points for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Can Leclerc strike back before the summer break?
The French Grand Prix weekend could hardly have gone better for Ferrari and Charles Leclerc up until the start of the 18th lap of Sunday’s race. After beating Red Bull to victory at the previous two rounds, Ferrari looked in with a strong chance of making it a hat trick of wins at Paul Ricard.
That was until Leclerc’s disastrous crash meant he dropped out of a race while leading for the third time in 2022 – the first by his own hand after two technical problems. With Leclerc out, Verstappen duly extended his already comfortable championship lead by another 25 points, making the prospects of a Ferrari fight back in the second half of the season seem less likely than it ever had before.
However, with just this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix before the summer break, there is at least one last chance for Leclerc and Ferrari to gain back some lost momentum and confidence before heading into the final stretch of the championship. Ferrari have tended to be relatively stronger around medium-speed corners so far in 2022, and the Hungaroring has those in abundance.
Red Bull were confident they could have beaten Ferrari to the chequered flag in France even if Leclerc had not thrown his car off the road, but losing out to Ferrari for the third race weekend in a row would have been a first for Red Bull in this 2022 season. Will Ferrari head into the break having outpaced their rivals yet again, or will Red Bull stamp their authority once more?
With a massive, 63-point deficit to his rival, Leclerc badly needs a change of luck. Fortune was not on the side of either him or Verstappen at this track 12 months ago, when both were involved in race-ruining first-lap collisions. If either suffers another misfortune this year, Leclerc badly needs it to not be him.
Magnussen finally gets the upgrades
Given that Haas have enjoyed a notable uptick in form over the last two months, it’s somewhat remarkable to note that the team have barely introduced any upgrades to their VF-22 so far this season.
Through the year, the team have been working hard back in Banbury and in Maranello to develop a significant and reliable upgrades package for their car. Finally, at the 13th round of the championship, the team will introduce it at the Hungarian Grand Prix, one race before the summer break.
However, just as Williams installed their upgrades package on only Alexander Albon’s car for two rounds prior to team mate Nicholas Latifi receiving the same benefit, this weekend, only Kevin Magnussen will get to race with the newly revised Haas. Mick Schumacher must make do with the same specification of the car that he has raced and scored points with in two of the last three race weekends.
Having moved ahead of AlphaTauri into seventh place in the constructors’ championship, Haas team principal Guenther Steiner admits that while his team are hungry to move even further up the standings, their first objective is to try and hold onto where they are and avoid dropping points to rivals behind. How far could this new package go towards helping them achieve that objective?
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Stuck in a rut?
While Haas have picked up points in recent raced, the same cannot be said about the two teams that sit either side of them in the constructors’ championship – Alfa Romeo and AlphaTauri.
Both midfield teams began the season with a steady trickle of points that saw them close to Alpine in the standings over the early races. However, since Gasly’s strong fifth place finish at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, AlphaTauri have failed to score a single point over the last four race weekends. Their pursuit of points was not helped by Yuki Tsunoda crashing into his team mate in Silverstone or Esteban Ocon bumping into Tsunoda on the opening lap of the French Grand Prix after a strong qualifying session. But a series of Q1 eliminations, including a puzzling one for Gasly last time out, have also hurt their chances.
Valtteri Bottas was a regular Q3 attendee in the opening six races of the championship, but has failed to reach the final phase of qualifying since the Spanish Grand Prix in May. Zhou Guanyu scored his second points of the season in Canada, but since then has been unable to fight for more top 10 finishes after crashing out spectacularly in Silverstone and having a difficult weekend in France with multiple errors and yet more mechanical problems.
All this is allowing Haas to benefit with double points finishes in Great Britain and Austria, moving them ahead of AlphaTauri and now just 17 points behind Alfa Romeo in sixth. With Haas finally bringing upgrades to their car this weekend, is that sixth place now becoming a realistic target?
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Ocon one year on
For the first time in his Formula 1 career, Esteban Ocon will arrive this weekend at a circuit as the defending race winner, having scored his maiden grand prix victory at Hungary last year.
Often that all-important first victory can be a breakthrough that set younger drivers off on a path towards eventually competing for world championships, but there have been many other drivers in F1 history whose first wins end up becoming the apex of their career trajectories. A year on from his impressive performance in tricky conditions,
With a 41 year old double world champion team mate as his benchmark, Ocon may enjoy a greater points haul so far this season and one more points finish (nine) than Alonso (eight), but the stats on Sundays do not tell the full story. Alonso currently leads Ocon 7-3 in qualifying sessions where neither drivers experienced any mitigating factors, while Alonso has had the lion’s share of bad luck this season, having taken a grid penalty in Spain, retired from two races, was affected by a badly timed Safety Car in Canada and had to start from the back of the grid in Austria after an electronics problem meant he never started the sprint race.
Can Ocon back up his top step heroics in Hungary last year with another strong performance this weekend?
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Rules of racing
After track limits were the focus after the Austrian Grand Prix, last weekend’s French Grand Prix brought the rules of racing under the spotlight once again.
Following a series of incidents in the British and Austrian grands prix, the 20 Formula 1 drivers sat down with the FIA and race directors Eduardo Freitas and Neils Wittich to examine some recent collisions and incidents and explore why actions – or even no action – had been taken by race control and the stewards.
Drivers were fairly universal in their assessment that the meeting had been a welcome one with a positive outcome, but that did not prevent controversy over racing rules from rearing its head in France. Most notably, George Russell was deeply unimpressed that Sergio Perez did not surrender third place at the end of the French Grand Prix following their clash at the chicane. The stewards deemed the incident not worth of investigation.
The tight, twisty nature of the Hungaroring is a world away from other circuits where DRS-assisted drive-bys are the most effective means of overtaking. With only one straight of note, the opportunities to pass have typically been limited in Hungary. That might change slightly this year, with the new cars for 2022 allowing drivers to follow rivals closer. Maybe the 90-degree right hander of turn 12 will invite some late lunges this weekend.
With more close-quarters combat expected this weekend, there could be yet more debate and discussion over what the rules of engagement are and should be in Formula 1.
Coming attractions
As F1 heads into its summer break, thoughts begin to turn to next year. Having been forced to cut this year’s schedule back from a planned 23 races to 22, an even longer championship looks likely next season.
As many as 24 races are tipped to feature on the 2023 F1 calendar. Returns to Qatar and Las Vegas are expected, and South Africa’s Kyalami circuit is also tipped for a comeback.
But accommodating those extra rounds without losing one or more of F1’s classic races would be impossible, as 24 events is the maximum Liberty Media is permitted to schedule under its current agreement with the teams. Are the likes of Paul Ricard and Spa-Francorchamps facing the chop? Official word may not be far away.
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