Updated 22 Jul 2023 5:45 pm:
Unbelievable scenes! Let me assure you, you aren’t dreaming. Max Verstappen isn’t on pole position. It’s Lewis Hamilton for Mercedes who secures his record breaking 9th Pole Position at Hungary, no driver has achieved more then 8 Pole Positions at one circuit and he has done it as well as finally returning to the front of the grid, Red Bull have been totally dominating but Lewis has put that to bed, admittedly it’s only qualifying but throughout the weekend Red Bull haven’t looked as strong as they normally do so maybe Mercedes and McLaren are in for a chance at victory.
However, it was bound to happen eventually, Red Bull were going to fall short of pole sooner rather than later and despite bringing significant upgrades which were said to gain 0.2s over their rivals it seems to be working against them not for.
Despite not getting pole position, Verstappen spoke after and said that the upgrades did have an effect yet Red Bull just seemed “all over the shop” during qualifying he said.
Lando Norris also spoke after qualifying exclaiming how disappointed he was to only finish P3. He believed that they had a lot more pace in the car and his lap wasn’t the best it could’ve been and driver error cost him pole. His disappointment must’ve been accentuated as he would miss out on pole by just 0.085 to Verstappen and Hamilton.
Yet it’s not all doom and gloom for McLaren as they seem to have quick race pace, missing out on pole isn’t fun but the race is where the points lie.
According to the in depth data analysis, McLaren and Mercedes seem to be the fastest and Red Bull trail being supposedly the third quickest car on the grid, but besides which team is the quickest, after the FP sessions Pirelli have analysed the tyres and suggested that tomorrows race very well could be a three stop strategy. This was unexpected at first as it was believed amongst the teams that it would likely be a two stop but Pirelli say three.
Yet trusting Pirelli may not be the smartest thing as they have more often then not underestimated the durability of the tyres, during the British Grand Prix they’d estimated how long the soft tyres would last but George Russell would go on to do near double their expected lifespan? Therefore inferring that maybe Pirelli aren’t always accurate but you never know with these data analysts… maybe they will guess correct this week.
Moving further down the grid, I don’t suppose you might’ve heard that Daniel Ricciardo replaced Nyck De Vries at AlphaTauri for the remainder of the season after his Red Bull tyre test results was enough to convince Helmut Marko to make the call.
He took the team to an impressive P13 in qualifying, one of their better results considering the car that they are in. Daniel Ricciardo has already outlined his goals for this season with AlphaTauri which is to hopefully score some points and boost them higher upon the constructors.
His P13 is convincing but the race data isn’t, it is fair to say that a series of many events would have to occur for AlphaTauri to score points but anything can happen in Formula 1.
As well as the new rather unorthodox qualifying format, it produced some wacky results on the grid. The format created Russell to go out in Q1 finishing P18, Ricciardo to get P13 and both Alfa Romeo’s to get into Q3 with Zhou Guanyu getting a remarkable P5! An astonishing result considering how dismal their car and season has been.
For those who aren’t entirely sure what the new format is, not to worry! This one isn’t as complicated as the sprint format which seems to change each time. This qualifying format is for Q1 all drivers have to use the hard compound tyre, for Q2 all drivers have to use the medium tyre and for Q3 all drivers have to use the soft compound tyre, nothing too over the top just a system to create chaos amongst the grid.
A lot of concerns came with the format but for its first trial you can’t complain, with a mixed up grid, it’s bound to provide entertainment for Sunday’s race, Hungary isn’t particularly the most entertaining of races due to it’s difficulty of being able to overtake, widely being known as ‘Monaco without barriers’, perhaps with the new spec of cars it will be easier considering that’s primarily what the new regulations set out to acheive.
