Race diary: things we learned from Saturday at the Hungaroring

F1 Grand Prix, GP Hungary, Hungaroring

Lewis Hamilton secures his first pole position since 2021, Daniel Ricciardo displays impressive performance on his return and the Hungaroring secures an unusually long contract extension. F1Technical's senior writer Balázs Szabó reports on Day 2 at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Even if we arrived quite early at the Hungaroring, there was a huge queue of cars on the M3 highway that leads to the Hungaroring. Crowds inside and outside the paddock, good atmosphere in the action-packed Fan Zone and unusually close racing on the Hungaroring. Here are the key takeaways that kept the paddock busy today.

Atfer raising eyebrows with their recent performances at the Austrian and the British Grands Prix, McLaren approached this weekend’s Budapest race cautiously. The Woking-based outfit expected the Hungaroring to be a bigger challenge for their car due to the twisty and tight nature of the Mogyoród track.

However, the British outfit was able to carry their eye-catching Silverstone form to Hungary with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri securing third and fourth on the starting grid for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Reflecting on his performance, Norris added: “I’m disappointed, I guess. If you are within a tenth of pole it feels like you should be on pole if you put the lap together. I guess as an overall picture I am happy.

“The team did a good job. P3, P4 for both of us. Good weekend so far. As a driver I am not the happiest, I feel like made too many mistakes and that cost me today.”

“There’s always little things. Just putting the lap together. It wasn’t the cleanest. I guess there is always an element of risk in trying to push a little bit more, nothing major,” Norris concluded.

On the eve of his return to the sport, Daniel Ricciardo displayed great speed in qualifying at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Australian knew before the weekend that he would face a difficult task, jumping in the AT04 without completing a single mileage beforehand.

However, things got even more complicated when Pirelli announced that they would trial a new tyre allocation for the Budapest race. With the number of slick tyre sets for each driver dropping from 13 to just 11, drivers were heavily limited in their preparation through the practice session.

To complicate things even further, rain and crash-induced interruptions further depived drivers of valueable track time which was exactly what returning Ricciardo would have needed.

However, the eight-time race winner narrowly beat his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda in qualifying, taking 13th on the grid, four places ahead of the Japanese racer. In truth, Tsunoda was only 13 thousands of a second slower in Q1, but that was just enough for him to get knocked out.

Commenting on his first qualifying in 2023, Ricciardo said: “The main thing is for me to get behind the wheel, feel good again and be comfortable in the car and the team. I feel like I’ve made good progress over the past two days and learnt relatively quickly, and as long as we keep progressing from here, I’ll be happy.

“It hasn’t been the easiest weekend to come in, with the wet conditions we had yesterday and the different tyre allocations, but I was happy to be competitive in qualifying. I don’t expect the racing to feel too foreign, I only took half a year off, so tomorrow will be fun, and of course, if there are gaps, I’ll see what the car can do.”

Friday’s opening day of the Hungarian Grand Prix ended very late, at half past seven. By contrast, Saturday’s track action came to a close when Formula One qualifying ended at 5p.m. However, work has not ended after that as the promoter kicked off its final preparation for the event.

With the track opened for the media and teams, I opted for another track walk to check the circuit after a demanding day. As I walked on the Hungaroring, I checked the different types of kerbs and also the spots of the track where cars left the biggest amount of marbles. As I walked up from the lowest point of the track to Alesi (Turn 4) corner, I spotted four people who repainted the exit kerbs that feature the Hungarian tricolor of red, white and green.

In the meantime, the pre-race procedure was simulated on the pit straight and the national anthem of Hungary was played on multiple occasions in order to get everything ready for Sunday’s race.

As soon as I got back to the pit lane, I saw workers paint the area beneath the podium where the three highest-finished cars will park down after the race.

Ahead of the qualifying session of the Hungarian Grand Prix, Formula 1 has announced that the Hungarian Grand Prix will remain on the calendar for an additional five years until 2032, extending the existing deal that runs until 2027.

Before signing the contract extension, the promoter of the Hungarian Grand Prix promised that the Hungaroring will undergo significant development and refurbishment in the coming years, including a new pit building and main grandstand.

Following the filming of the F1-inspired Brad Pitt’s movie in Silverstone, production of Apple’s F1 film has continued at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, despite the impact of a Hollywood actors’ strike. Just as two weeks ago in Silverstone, the garage of the fictional Apex team that Pitt drives for in the movie has been set up in the Hungaroring’s pit lane.

The production was given multiple ten-minute slots over the course of the weekend when they can record on-track action for the film.

The group works with two F2 cars that were equipped with aerodynamic elements that make the cars look like F1 cars. Both APXGP team cars are equipped with Pirelli tyres. The logo of the FIA Formula One World Championship's Global Tyre Partner also appears on the front wing and nose of Pitt and his teammate's car.

After securing the pole position in the last five qualifying sessions, Max Verstappen was today pipped by Lewis Hamilton in qualifying of the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Briton last secured a pole position at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, and spent the 2022 season without clinching a single first starting position.

With the Hungaroring featuring slow corners and short straights, it was expected that Red Bull would not enjoy such a competitive advantage it has held over the course of the previous races. However, with the help of their first major upgrade package of the season, it was believed that Max Verstappen would have good chances of claiming his second pole position at the Hungaroring.

In fact, the Dutchman had an uphill battle during today’s qualifying as he was fighting with the balance of his car all through the session, and ended up in P2 three thousands of a second behind eight-time Hungaroring race winner Lewis Hamilton.

Speaking of his qualifying, Verstappen added: “Not much happened. I’ve been struggling the whole weekend to find a good balance. Every session has been up and down.

“Today also in qualifying, really difficult, Q1 and Q2 to just feel confident to really attack corners. I thought my first run in Q3 was quite good, but then second round again no feeling, tried to push a little bit more, you lose the rear, you lose the front.

“I mean, it was still second, but I think we should be ahead with the car we have normally, but so far this weekend I think we haven’t been on it.”

There was disappointment on the other side of the garage as George Russell did not manage to get himself through into the final part of qualifying. In fact, the Briton was knocked out at the end of the opening qualifying segment and will line up in 18th on the grid for tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

Russell found himself in a queue ahead of his final hot lap, and was overtaken by four drivers which meant that he started his last push lap on slightly cold tyres. It meant that he was unable to improve his previous time in the opening sector and with times having been so close in today’s qualifying, he was unable to recover the lost time later on during the lap.

Commenting on his misery, the one-time F1 race winner added: “But for the whole session we were out of sync with everybody and then I got overtaken by four cars into the last corner starting my lap – one of which was [Pierre] Gasly – and I was three tenths down before I even got to Turn 1. Tyres were nowhere and it was totally normal that we went slower and I didn’t make it through.

“Really disappointed because we didn’t really need to take so many risks. We went out for one lap at the end, we were one of the few cars who did that, the car was more than quick enough to get through to Q2/Q3. It’s rare that we make these kind of mistakes. You get what you deserve, I guess, if you don’t do things right,” concluded Russell.