HAMILTON’S MASTERPLAN
LEWIS LEAVES IT LATE IN HUNGARY
1.Verstappen and Hamilton’s ‘awesome’ fight
It took a typically bravura performance from Lewis Hamilton to wrest victory from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the 2019 Hungarian Grand Prix. This was undoubtedly the first time these two aces have been able to race each other flat-out, throwing the business of tyre management to the wind.
But it was the absence of both their team-mates – and the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel – that enabled Mercedes to take the strategic gamble which broke the race open. Verstappen and
Hamilton were so far up the road that Hamilton was able to make an extra pitstop, then chase down and usurp the race leader with the chequered flag almost in sight.
As one of the least power-sensitive circuits, the Hungaroring has been a happy hunting ground for Red
Bull in recent years. So it was little surprise to see Verstappen securing his maiden Formula 1 pole position, albeit by just 0.018s, from the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas, with Hamilton nearly two-tenths further in arrears. While Hamilton lamented that his car’s performance had “plateaued” between final practice and qualifying, the Ferraris never made the ascent – Leclerc and Vettel, fourth and fifth on the grid, were the best part of half a second off Verstappen’s pace.
Having made some indifferent starts in recent races, Verstappen got away cleanly from the lights to assume the race lead as Hamilton dispatched Bottas with a feisty move around the outside at Turn 3. Leclerc then took advantage of Bottas’s compromised exit from the corner to snatch third place on the run to Turn 4, but in doing so nudged the Mercedes’ front wing with his left-rear tyre. That consigned Bottas to a long slog.
Hamilton then shadowed Verstappen as they both broke well clear. By lap 24 of the 70, when Verstappen pitted to exchange his medium-compound Pirellis for hards, they had just over 20s in hand over Leclerc – enough to emerge ahead and begin the process of leaving the scarlet cars for dust once more. Hamilton had cruised up to Verstappen’s rear wing in advance of the Red Bull’s stop and now his engineer Peter Bonnington announced it was “Hammer Time”.
But, although Verstappen was briefly held up by the George Russell/lance Stroll/antonio Giovinazzi battle for 17th place after his stop, once in clear air he was able to find enough pace to ensure that he regained the lead when Hamilton pitted for hards six laps later. When Hamilton tried and failed to pass it looked like he had used the best of his tyres and Verstappen was well set for the run to the flag.
But Mercedes brought Hamilton in again on lap 48 for new mediums. Red Bull daren’t follow suit for fear of yielding track position, so Verstappen had to turn his engine up and push on as Hamilton attacked his 20-second lead. Four laps from the flag Verstappen’s tyres gave up and Hamilton dived past into Turn 1. “It felt like the steepest kind of wall to climb,” said Hamilton. “Hopefully we’ll see more of these battles.”
2.Pressure mounts on Bottas and Gasly
Had the ‘other’ Mercedes and Red Bull drivers been in the mix, it’s unlikely that Lewis Hamilton would have been in a position to make the left-field two-stop strategy work. But Valtteri Bottas and Pierre Gasly were elsewhere at the critical moment having made costly mistakes on the first lap.
Bottas’s performance in the first few corners from his front-row starting position was scrappy. Not always the most forceful driver in combat, he was certainly trying hard, but it fell to his detriment as he locked up twice in the first two corners, gave his own team-mate a tap, then lost his front wing in a contact with Charles Leclerc for which the race director deemed him partially responsible.
Pitting early for a nose change left him chasing from the back of the field on hard-compound tyres, but the Mercedes strategists still felt sixth place might be possible.
Although he reached ninth place before making a second pitstop on lap 46 for mediums, Bottas lost three positions in the stop and had to spend the final laps clawing his way past uncooperative midfielders on his way to eighth. Not the best way to enter the summer break for a driver out-ofcontract at the end of this season.
“You don’t see me jumping up and down for joy,” said Toto Wolff.
Gasly also contrived to make heavy weather of the opening lap, dropping from fifth to ninth. He gained a place by dint of Bottas’s stop, then the Red Bull pit crew did the rest at the stops, helping him to jump Kimi Raikkonen and Lando Norris. But he was unable to crack Mclaren’s Carlos Sainz and came home sixth, a lap down.
“It is vital for us, if we are to stand any chance of catching Ferrari, that we have him finishing further ahead,” said team principal Christian Horner. “Today both Mercedes and Red Bull had one-legged races.”
3.Podium bonus for ‘not quick’ferrari
Ferrari salvaged a podium position on a day when it was very much cast adrift from the battle for the lead.
Ahead of the weekend, team principal Mattia Binotto conceded in media interviews that the low-drag concept of the SF19 is flawed, and that finding a remedy will not be the work of a moment – if, indeed, it is possible to action this season.
Charles Leclerc and Sebastian Vettel qualified fourth and fifth but, aside from Leclerc’s opportunistic pass on Valtteri Bottas on lap one (from which he was lucky to escape a puncture), neither of them were in contention for victory. Indeed, it was telling when Vettel was informed that his race strategy, which was to extend his first stint on mediums to 39 laps before swapping to softs, was “Plan C”.
The Ferraris were only racing each other, and “Plan C” came to fruition when Vettel mugged Leclerc for third place at Turn 1 three laps from the flag. They came home a minute down on the leader.
“It [the strategy] was really for the sake of trying something different,” said Vettel. “The big picture for today is that we were not quick enough and not able to follow them right from two laps into the race.”
4.Mclaren trumps its engine supplier again
That Mclaren should have finished fifth and sixth in Hungary was a testament to the team’s progress this season under a revitalised technical and managerial regime. Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz qualified seventh and eighth and jumped Pierre Gasly’s Red Bull on the opening lap as Sainz moved ahead of Norris. They then gained another place when Valtteri Bottas dropped to the tail of the field.
The pitstop phase was the only obstacle to them claiming fifth and sixth. But although Norris was able to emerge from his stop ahead of Bottas, a slow left-rear change meant he lost track position to Gasly and Raikkonen. He clung on to eighth until lap 62, when Bottas went by, but Sainz held Gasly at bay to claim fifth.
Engine supplier Renault had a wretched weekend. Daniel Ricciardo was eliminated in Q3 when he and Sergio Perez tried to claim the same patch of asphalt. He laboured to make a long first stint on hards work, and he emerged from his stop behind Kevin Magnussen, who ‘parked the bus’ for another 20 laps.
Team-mate Nico Hulkenberg finished 12th, hobbled when his engine went into ‘safe mode’.
5.Battling Perez denied a point
While Hamilton’s performance dominated the headlines, Sergio Perez’s race from the nether regions of the grid is similarly worthy of note. Perez missed the cut for Q2 when his flying lap was compromised by Daniel Ricciardo trying to overtake, but a penalty for Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi elevated him to 16th on the grid.
Perez underlined his reputation as a driver with an uncanny ability to make the best out of most situations by gaining four places on the opening lap. Although he dropped back to
16th when he stopped relatively early to go on to the hards, on lap
18, he lapped consistently quick enough to claw back positions as the drivers he’d passed on lap one – Alexander Albon, Daniil Kvyat, Hulkenberg and Magnussen – eventually pitted.
An early stop by Romain Grosjean’s ailing Haas gave him another place, as did Valtteri Bottas’s second stop, as Perez tailed Ricciardo to the cusp of the top 10. Ricciardo’s stop looked to have handed Perez a points finish that had seemed unlikely post-qualifying, but seven laps from the end Albon bludgeoned his way by at Turn 1 to claim the final point.