Although the majority of the drivers pursued a classic two-stop strategy at last Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix, RB driver Yuki Tsunoda impressed with a one-stop strategy. F1Technical's lead journalist Balazs Szabo analyses strategies from the Mogyoród F1 round.

McLaren was able to convert its one-two result in qualifying into a double victory on Sunday. The Budapest race saw Oscar Piastri secure his maiden Formula 1 win, while Lando Norris started from pole and finished behind the Australian. Lewis Hamilton made it to the third step of the podium, recording his 200th top-three finish from 345 Formula 1 Grand Prix starts, a hit rate of 57.97%.

This was McLaren’s second win of the season, its 185th in total and the twelfth at the Hungaroring, while their tally of one-two finishes is now 49, the last one dating back to the 2021 Italian Grand Prix when Norris was again second behind an Australian driver, on that occasion Daniel Ricciardo.

Commenting on the 39th Hungarian Grand Prix, Pirelli's Motorsport Director Mario Isola said: “I think the 310,000 spectators who came to the Hungaroring this weekend and the millions watching on TV and through other channels around the world must have enjoyed themselves.

"The weekend began like a game of chess and then reached its peak with a very closely contested and open race in which the lead changed hands seven times."

Strategies

Pirelli brought its softest tyres to the Hungaroring with the C5 serving as the soft, the C4 as the medium and the C3 as the hard compound. Although the red-walled tyres endured a sudden loss of grip just after a single hot lap, it was a viable race tyre. It meant that while Pirelli had expected teams to pursue a two-stop strategy, it had also indicated that several variations of compounds were possible.

At the start, 13 drivers opted for the C4 for the first stint, while four went with the Soft and three, including Gasly who started from pit lane, chose the Hard.

Almost the entire field went with a two-stop strategy, with just three drivers doing something different. While the three-stop delivered no benefit for Ocon and Sargeant, as the final pit stop for Soft tyres came when there was no longer anything to lose, it was a different matter for Tsunoda who was on a one-stop and finished ninth mainly due to his managing the tyres well in both stints, (first for 29 laps on the Medium and then 41 on the Hard).

Following their choices made during free practice, the two Aston Martin drivers were locked into planning a strategy using all three compounds in the order Soft/Medium/Hard which yielded just one point courtesy of a tenth place for Stroll, who finished one place ahead of Alonso.

The Silverstone-based outfit made a surprise call by calling Alonso early in on Lap 7. The Spaniard looked comfortable on his softs, which made the decision awkward, leaving Alonso vulnerable later on during the race against his rivals, who ran a more conventional two-stop strategy, completing the first stop later.

The two-time world champion commented: "The strategy was not optimal, but obviously it is very easy to say that after the race. The team felt it was a good call, but it was a big surprise when we stopped on lap seven because we talked about how our car is hard on its tyres normally.

"So if you are stopping on lap seven, there are 63 laps to do with one medium and one hard, and it was a challenge from that point. There was a high price to pay if you did one stint on one set of tyres, and they called me in on lap seven and I knew that the race was over," noted Alonso.

The longest stints (41 on the Hard) were completed by the two RB drivers, Ricciardo and Tsunoda, while the longest Medium stint went to Stroll on 31 laps and he also did the most laps (14) on the Soft.

Daniel Ricciardo endured similar fortunes to Alonso as his team called him very early in on Lap 7. Although the Australian looked very strong all weekend long, topping the first qualifying segment and qualifying ninth on the grid, the compromised strategy saw the eight-time F1 race winner end up only 12th

The early stop meant that Ricciardo could not extract everything from his medium tyres, and spent the majority in traffic.

“Today it was a long and frustrating race," started Ricciardo. "We didn’t use the pace we had in the clear air. We were on the mediums at the start of the race and after only a few laps we pitted for new hards together with the other cars who started on softs, coming out in traffic.

"It’s even more frustrating because we were quick all weekend, and I felt like we have taken ourselves out of the race so early as we couldn’t fight cars that were coming much quicker on newer tyres.”

Isola noted: “With temperatures pretty similar to those we had seen in Friday’s second free practice session, the Medium probably turned out to be the most efficient compound overall: if it had not been for the collision with Hamilton, Verstappen would almost certainly have finished third.

"But the Hard, which was definitely the most used compound, was also competitive, not just on the two Mercedes, but on other cars too. In the end, I think this race once again demonstrated how important it is for the teams to carefully work out which are the compounds best suited to their cars, as well as showing how the current range of tyres lets us see how different strategy choices work out on track.

"After all, that is actually the main objective set for us every year by the FIA, Formula 1 and the sport’s other stakeholders, namely to provide tyres that are first and foremost a guarantee of the maximum possible safety, while allowing the teams and drivers to exploit their potential to the full.

"That what we try our best to achieve, not just in Formula 1, but also in the two junior categories, for which we are the sole tyre supplier," commented Isola.