In Pictures: Hungary 2021
Chaos in Hungary!
The weekend started with lots of questioning regarding the tense situation between Red Bull and Mercedes. The Austrian team requested a review to the stewards’ decision regarding Hamilton’s penalty for the crash at Silverstone. New evidence was reviewed by the Stewards, but not accepted so there was no change to the penalties applied.
Onto practices at the Hungaroring. Max Verstappen was fastest in the first practice, with Mercedes finishing quickest with Hamilton in the second practice. On Saturday, Hamilton continued his good form topping the charts in the final practice.
Qualifying, as expected, gave us a great battle between Red Bull and Mercedes for Pole Position. For the final runs, Red Bull misjudged timing and sent both cars behind Hamilton’s, with Verstappen ahead of Perez. Hamilton came out of the pits almost crawling, increasing the Red Bull driver’s desperation as time was running out. During the out lap, Hamilton continued his tactics and when they reached the start-finish line to start their flying lap the tires were not to temperature thus neither Hamilton nor Verstappen were able to make faster laps. Perez did not cross the line on time and couldn’t do a fast lap. So, it was a Mercedes front row lock-up with Hamilton on Pole, his 101st, with Bottas on second.
Then came Sunday… Drops of rain began coming down just before the start of the race, so it was a wet start with everyone on Intermediates. The race started and then chaos ensued! Bottas made a terrible start, got passed by a charging Lando Norris, and misjudged his braking into turn one, hitting Norris’ McLaren and sending him forward like a torpedo. Both cars then crashed into both Red Bulls and mayhem started. Meanwhile, Lance Stroll tried an overtaking maneuver on Leclerc on the grass but couldn’t manage to stop and crashed into his Ferrari, damaging it beyond repair. At the end of the first lap, Bottas, Norris, Perez, Leclerc, Stroll were out and Verstappen’s Red Bull heavily missing the right-side barge board and front floor, compromising his performance.
Due to the first lap crash, the race was red flagged. Once the race was green flagged, all remaining drivers came out on the original intermediate tires. Once the formation lap was sorted out, only leader Lewis Hamilton remained on track. Everybody else came into the pits, and he alone formed the starting grid. The race was restarted, and everybody came out on fresher slick tires, lapping considerably faster than Hamilton, who came in for new tires on the next lap and dropping to last place.
Up ahead, it was Esteban Ocon defending lap after lap from the ever present Sebastian Vettel. And a fierce Lewis Hamilton, overtaking car after car and climbing from P14 to finish third, but not before having to overtake a very fast Fernando Alonso, a battle that delighted us for many, many laps until the mighty Mercedes passed the lesser powered Alpine. Carlos Sainz tried to hold Hamilton, but the Mercedes was too much for the Ferrari and lost his third place just three laps from the end. Further back, Max Verstappen had to endure a very ill RB16B to finish P10. And on the last lap, Pierre Gasly did the fastest lap of the race, and taking the all valuable point for AlphaTauri.
Both Lance Stroll and Valtteri Bottas were found guilty of causing the first lap crash and were penalized with a five-place grid drop at Belgium.
Several hours after the race, Sebastian Vettel was disqualified, losing his second place as the stewards were unable to take the required amount of fuel for sampling. They could only retrieve 300 ml of the required 1 liter.