Written by Ethan Lewis, Edited by Ishani Aziz
The 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix started on Friday practice where both Mercedes cars were off the pace (about 1.1 seconds behind the toppers of the time sheets). Despite that, George Russell took pole on the Saturday in a shocking last minute of Q3. This is the first pole position for the Brit, after 2 failed attempts where he qualified second at the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix and the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix respectively.
During the formation lap Russell sped around the 4.381km long Hungaroring track and lined up in his grid spot 47 seconds before Nicholas Latifi lined up in his P19 grid spot.
Carlos Sainz got a good launch from P2 on the grid and challenged Russel into the first few corners but wasn’t able to pass the Mercedes, meanwhile Hamilton and both Red Bulls managed to pick up a few positions in the first lap after starting P10 and P11 respectively. After multiple incidents at turn 2 the VSC was brought out and Russel was able to increase his gap on both Ferrari drivers at the restart.
Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez managed to cut their ways through the field on their first stint after both starting on the C4 soft tyres. During the first round of pit stops Verstappen managed to get a big undercut on Hamilton who he was closing in on beforehand. Sainz pitted to cover off Verstappen, Charles Leclerc then stayed out for five more laps and had enough pace on his C3 medium tyres to pull off an overcut on his teammate.
Leclerc then chased down the leader, Russell, and battled for a few laps before finally overtaking him into turn one on lap 31. On lap 35 multiple drivers reported drops of rain at turn five-eight.
Verstappen pitted for another set of medium tyres and Ferrari decided to try and cover off the Red Bull driver by boxing Leclerc for hard tyres even after seeing how much the alpines struggled on them. Verstappen then easily overtook the Monegasque driver but spun a lap later exiting turn 13 costing him the net race lead which he got back three laps later by overtaking Leclerc once again.
Daniel Ricciardo had a lockup on his left front tyre at turn 3 while battling Lance stroll causing him to crash into the Canadian and spin him around.
Ferrari then made the call to box Leclerc again with 16 laps to go on to the soft tyre but he was nowhere near as quick as Hamilton on older softs who managed to pass Sainz and Russell to take P2 for the second week in a row.
The VSC was called out once again when Valtteri Bottas’ engine cut out 3 laps from the end. After the VSC ended it started to rain with two laps to go and Sebastian Vettel passed teammate Stroll to finish P10 for a single championship point just 4 days after he announced his retirement from Formula 1.
Max Verstappen finished in P1 taking his 28th career victory and his 8th of the season, increasing his lead at the top of the Drivers Championship over Leclerc to 80 points. With Red Bull 97 Points ahead of Ferrari in the Constructors Championship. And Mercedes closing up to Ferrari in both the Drivers and Constructors Championships respectively after a second double podium finish in a row.
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