Red Lap Records at the Hungaroring
Heading into the final race of the first half of the season, Ferrari is in the lead—and Kimi Antonelli is still working on finding the right setup at Mercedes
Budapest – The Hungarian Grand Prix is the final race before the summer break, and it’s off to a better start than expected for Ferrari. In the first free practice session, Charles Leclerc set the fastest time of 1:19.075; in the second, Lewis Hamilton took the lead with a time of 1:18.729, with Leclerc trailing by 0.148 seconds. Only then did a driver from another team—Lando Norris—appear in the top three. The Scuderia has brought a new rear wing variant for this weekend, designed to provide more traction in the slow corners—precisely where the Hungaroring race is decided.
Mercedes, on the other hand, struggled. Kimi Antonelli missed the first practice session entirely because a junior driver was in the car, and in the second session, he couldn’t get past 13th place. He complained about being held up in traffic and an unstable rear end. Still, his car performed significantly better on long runs with a heavy fuel load than on a single fast lap. For the 19-year-old from Bologna, there’s more at stake than just a good weekend: With 204 points, he leads the drivers’ standings, 45 points ahead of Hamilton and 50 ahead of his teammate George Russell. He has six wins in ten races so far, most recently at Spa after a duel with Leclerc.
In the Constructors' Championship, Mercedes leads with 358 points, followed by Ferrari with 285, which has recently been gaining ground. The Scuderia has won two races this season: Hamilton claimed his first victory in the red car in Barcelona in June, and Leclerc won at Silverstone in early July—which also marked the team’s 250th Formula 1 victory, ironically on the very same track where it secured its first win in 1951.
The Hungaroring is 4.381 kilometers long, has 14 turns, and the race consists of 70 laps. The track demands a lot of downforce and rewards traction, but is considered extremely difficult for passing; serious overtaking opportunities exist practically only on the start-finish straight. This makes the starting grid all the more important. One statistic, however, offers hope to the chasing pack: in the past five races, the driver who started from pole position has never won. Hungary has been on the calendar without interruption since 1986; this is the 40th edition.
Qualifying begins on Saturday at 4 p.m., and the race starts on Sunday at 3 p.m. The weather is unusually cool by Hungarian standards. For Hamilton, a victory would be his ninth on this track—a record that was already the subject of extensive discussion in Italy even before the weekend.
