The dream of a Hungaroring classic lasted around 580 metres.
That’s how long it took Max Verstappen to slide down pole-getter Lewis Hamilton’s inside at the first turn and take a lead he’d never relinquish.
From then: every lap led, fastest lap, 33-second victory.
Easy as you like.
It was a remarkable turnaround from Verstappen’s extreme disappointment, almost borderline fury, over missing out on pole by just 0.003 seconds a day earlier.
He’d hinted on Saturday night that the balance problems afflicting him over one lap might come back around to benefit him in the race, when the weather would be hotter and tyre degradation would be more severe, and so it proved.
“Today my car was really, really quick,” he said. “I think over one lap this weekend was a bit of a struggle, but it was probably a good thing for today.
“The car was good on any tyre, we could look after the tyre wear — that’s why we could create such a big gap.”
There’s an inevitability about Verstappen and Red Bull Racing.
The car is obviously fast enough to do the business, but in Verstappen’s hands the result is never truly in doubt. Not only is the man perfectly suited to the machine, but the Dutchman is operating at maximum confidence to take the car to it limit without ever exceeding it.
It’s not always pretty and not always entertaining, but it is greatness.
STORY OF THE RACE: RED BULL RACING DEFINES ITS ERA
No team has ever enjoyed as successful a period as Red Bull Racing is revelling in at this moment.
Dating back to Abu Dhabi last year, the team has won 12 grands prix in a row, the longest streak of any constructor, eclipsing McLaren’s fabled 11 in succession in its legendary 1988 season.
Those of the opinion the new benchmark will only count when it’s set in one season need only wait seven more days, when Red Bull Racing will be the overwhelming favourite to win again at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.
The reality is that the RB19 exists in the same pantheon of cars as the McLaren MP4/4, piloted by Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.
To put that into context, consider how many other great teams have come close without ever sealing the deal.
Mercedes, despite its crushing dominance of most of the last decade, was repeatedly stopped short with 10 straight wins, twice in 2016 and again in 2019.
Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello likewise took Ferrari’s dominant F2002 to 10 but no further.
Red Bull Racing itself got as far as nine wins in 2013 and again last season.
All of those teams at those times defined their respective eras: McLaren of the late 1980s, Ferrari of the early 2000s, Red Bull Racing of the early 2010s and Mercedes of the rest of that decade.
Red Bull Racing is now in the thick of its second golden age. You can only respect the scale of the achievement.
McLAREN ON A HIGH DESPITE PIASTRI STRATEGY CALL
For once even Lando Norris had to admit that he’d got it wrong.
The Briton was categorical in the lead-up to the Hungarian Grand Prix that McLaren would not have podium-contending pace. The track was too slow and too hot, the main indicators of MCL60 poor performance.
But a second-row lockout and another second-place trophy — on one of the calendar’s slowest tracks and on what will be on the season’s hottest Sundays — begged to differ.
It’s another enormous validation for McLaren’s massive progress with its major upgrade package introduced at the start of the month — perhaps doubly so given the third and final stage of the upgrade didn’t turn up this week as planned and has been delayed until after the mid-season break.
There are surely few track left for the team to fear. This is real.
Of course it wasn’t quite a perfect day for McLaren despite Norris beating every driver bar Verstappen.
Oscar Piastri clung to fifth at the flag, around half a minute down on his teammate.
It’s tempting to put that all down to a questionable strategy call made at the end of the first stint, when Norris was given the undercut past Piastri in a reactionary pit stop after Hamilton dived into the pits for fresh rubber.
The team said it stopped Norris first because he was most at risk of being undercut, notwithstanding he rejoined the race with a comfortable buffer.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown said later that the pit wall was considering swapping the drivers back around at the end of the race in recognition of the mistake — normally the leading driver gets pit-stop priority when it won’t harm the overall result.
But it amounted to nothing anyway, because Piastri faded after the first stint.
The Aussie blamed himself in a way very much in keeping with his modest, workmanlike approach to his rookie season.
“I struggled a lot with the tyres,” he said. “We’ll have a look at what I could have done better. Obviously the car is capable of more than that.
“I think some struggles are to be expected in some way but I obviously I want to try and do a better job than that.”
But team principal Andrea Stella revealed afterwards that floor damage was to blame
“Oscar is a guy that doesn’t look for excuses, so I’m not surprised he might not even have mentioned it. But it was there,” he said.
Prior to the damage, Piastri had been holding his own in second place, meaning there was still much good to be taken from this weekend despite another podium chance eluding him.
And given McLaren’s form, it’s hard to imagine he’ll be waiting long for his next podium shot.
RICCIARDO TAKES RACE INTO HIS OWN HANDS
It’s not often you can say a race weekend was a solid success when you’re punted out of points contention at the first corner of the first lap, but it’s undeniably true of Daniel Ricciardo in his comeback grand prix.
The Aussie returnee hasn’t put a foot wrong all round in Budapest, where F1’s exacting spotlight has been trained on him all weekend.
Having built himself up through practice to outqualify teammate Yuki Tsunoda in the race, Ricciardo rounded out the weekend with a strong leadership drive worthy of points but painfully lacking the opportunity to score.
Things could have been so different at Zhou Guanyu not slipped into anti-stall off the line and, in his haste to make up ground, rear-ended Ricciardo at the first corner.
But it was the way Ricciardo took his grand prix in his hands from that moment that underlined why his inclusion at AlphaTauri is so valuable — and why the ultimate outcome of his tenure will be so interesting.
Rather than just bring the car home and focus on his physical fitness and learning the basics of the car, he tried to make the most of his chances to maximise his pace and push the car to its limits in race trim.
“I was just stuck behind a bit of a train behind (Logan) Sargeant and someone else and I knew in dirty air, even with these new cars, this circuit is definitely a hard one to follow,” he said after the race.
“They pitted quite early, and as soon as they did I felt the grip coming back in the tyre and thought, ‘Let’s see what we can do in clear air’. And that was better.
“We pitted relatively early. I think we got put back in traffic and that’s when I was like, ‘Whatever we can do, let’s have a think to give me clear air’.
“Because it’s so hard to pass and we have been a little bit down on top speed, it was just trying to do an ultimate strategy.”
Ricciardo leading from the cockpit turned what probably would’ve been a back-of-field finish with some minor first-lap damage into a competitive 13th.
Impressively it was 15 seconds ahead of Nico Hülkenberg, who qualified in Q3 — notwithstanding Haas’s usual diabolic race pace — and also ahead of teammate Tsunoda.
The comparison with Tsunoda is interesting considering the Japanese driver was up to 11th on the first lap and looked like a chance for points if things fell his way.
Instead he spent too much time on the hard tyre in the middle of the race, some of which was spent in traffic, and lost a bucketload of race time between laps 30 and 45.
It’s not a like-for-like comparison. Tsunoda was hemmed in to an extent by starting on the soft tyre. Few thought the medium compound would last as long as Ricciardo discovered it did.
Ricciardo also had nothing to lose by rolling the dice.
But it’s also true to say that feeling for the conditions and the race situation is part of the experience Ricciardo brings to the table — and this race was a great, if minor, demonstration of what he’ll be offering this year.
SERGIO PÉREZ’S STATEMENT DRIVER
It’ll take more than one podium finish to restore his reputation, but it sure is a good start.
Sergio Pérez had had a so-so-weekend up to Sunday. He’d crashed embarrassingly within minutes of starting Friday practice, and though he cracked Q3 for a grand prix for the first time since May’s Miami Grand Prix, he was only ninth on the grid.
But his race was of the sort that Red Bull Racing hired him for.
The Mexican, for a change, looked comfortable. He got his elbows out with confidence, barging his way up through the field with his alternative strategy, and he was competitive on all compounds of tyre.
You couldn’t have written a better recovery.
True, he finished 37 seconds behind his teammate, and true, he probably should’ve caught and passed Lando Norris for second with his strategy. He blamed backmarkers and the massive build-up of tyre marbles off the racing line for slowing his progress, and both hold water.
But that also doesn’t really matter. Podiums are what Pérez need to justify his place at Red Bull Racing. He doesn’t have to challenge Verstappen and he doesn’t even have to necessarily finish second all the time. He just has to do enough to be convincing as a spoiler against a theoretical rival team next season to ensure the constructors championship.
This was the sort of drive that would achieve that. On a weekend all talk was about the prospects of Daniel Ricciardo pinching his seat in a future season, this was a reminder that Pérez has the ball in his court and is still capable of returning serve.
ALPINE’S AFTERNOON OF WOE
A final note of commiseration to Alpine, the French team that can’t catch a trick.
Not only were both cars wiped out by the Zhou-triggered first lap accident, with Esteban Ocon almost comically cannoning into Pierre Gasly in a way that just felt inevitable, but the team then had to watch McLaren score big points yet again in the suddenly one-sided battle for fifth on the constructors table.
After the Canadian Grand Prix Alpine was leading McLaren by 27 points, the margin 44-17.
Three races later and McLaren has outscored Alpine 70-3.
The margin is a whopping 40 points in McLaren’s favour, 87-47.
McLaren is threatening to become a full-blown frontrunner before the end of the season. Alpine, despite its Monaco podium, is yet to show any similarly impressive turn of pace.
A hard year for Alpine looks like it just got harder.
