F1 2024 - Round 13 - Budapest - Hungaroring

Verstappen and Hamilton ruled a driving incident I see.

Max has doubled down on his criticism in the post race interviews which won't help quell rumours of him leaving. I quite enjoy when there is a bit of back and forth on the radios. He did cross a line today though. He also failed to mention how he didn't make the overtake in the race stick earlier when he ran wide.

There was a radio message to Lando that said he could race the paprika car until the mid 40's (presumably the mid 40 laps) so yeah, probably was instruction to hold station by lap 45.

Still stupid of McLaren to put Norris in that position when there was zero threat in behind. Mclaren need to be a lot smarter with their in race stragety if they want to go for the constructors. Cost them a few races this year already with some dithering calls.

I will never buy another Mclaren ever again.

Me neither.

Because I obviously can’t afford one and nothing to do with the formula 1 racing team.

Enjoyable race even if most of the action was on the radios rather than the track.

Norris tends to try too hard from pole to get across the track and block the car in 2nd rather than concentrating on making the first corner in the lead and it caught him out again today. After that McLaren made it more awkward than it needed to be. They didn't need to pit Norris to cover Hamilton and could easily have waited a few more laps to pit Piastri then Norris and sailed off to a comfortable one two. They got there in the end so may not be a problem but definitely think Norris's actions took the shine of Piastri's first win.

Max not happy all weekend and it showed today, two poor attempts to pass Hamilton. Runs wide after a mistake by Hamilton then torpedoes up the inside. Must be frustrating for him to have no help with Perez so far back and the Red Bull no longer the fastest car on the track.

Its building up to be a great season, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and maybe Ferrari all capable of winning races

Never ever change @AMKC

Tell us how you really feel.

I get that it's all about the constructors championship which is all about the money over winning a driver's championship.

But no one remembers which team won they only remember the driver of that year. It will be a hollow win if they win the constructures yet lose the driver's championship by 5 points at the end. Lando lost 7 points today that he should have.

Remember when Red bull told Max to swap and all he said was no and don't ask again. Everyone shrugged their shoulders and continued on saying that's why he is a champion.

…ahhh

Verstappen really has shown his true colours today. Surely even the most one-eyed fans can't defend him after that.

In turn 1 he did exactly what he did when Norris passed him in Austria. He nailed the throttle well before the exit kerb and used the runoff to maximise his speed through the corner so he didn't lose the position, then wrongly blamed Norris for running him off the road.

He spent much of the race moaning about his car, his team, everyone. Some have claimed that Hamilton complains when he's not winning - but it's nothing like the endless, odious way in which Verstappen complains.

And as for that move on Hamilton, it was yet another example that spoke to his desperation and a complete lack of ability to race cleanly unless he has a massive car advantage.

When he is not winning he puts himself, but more importantly, others in danger, that is not a skillful driver by any stretch of the imagination, he was never making that pass on Hamilton, though some people are trying to make excuses, well , some are.

You can be a skilful driver in that you have the skill required to drive a car quickly but you don’t possess the skill to do that and avoid hitting other cars at the same time. In my opinion that is why he will never be a great driver in the way that Stewart, Lauda, Senna, Hamilton and others have been.

However if he is to be the one of the greatest drivers ever, move teams and win a WDC and constructors with another team and prove you can adapt to any environment and become one of the true greats of the sport.

You should probably pay attention to what actually happened rather than take the gaslighting of the British commentators as gospel.

Both Hamilton and the stewards said the collision was just a racing incident, nothing more. Drivers make late moves like that all the time and it doesn't always work out, it's nothing unusual. Lando did it multiple times on Max at Austria, the difference being that Max stayed out of the way instead of turning in and clipping him the way Hamilton did. Max did brake late (technically according to the telemetry he braked at the same time as normal, but misjudged that he was carrying more speed than the previous lap), and he locked up but his trajectory was not towards Hamilton, it was to the inside of him. The contact happened because Lewis turned in and clipped him. The stewards recognised in their conclusion that Lewis could have avoided doing that, and Lewis himself was happy to just call it a racing incident rather than try to blame Max. Nobody directly involved thought it was a big deal.

In the last two years I think Max has been in a total of two collisions, both of which were pretty minor tyre on tyre contacts that the media have blown wildly out of proportion, despite the fact that in both incidents even the other driver involved didn't think it was anything more than a racing incident and didn't blame Max (Lando did at first but changed his mind on reviewing replays and data). I'm not sure there are many drivers on the grid with a cleaner record.

As for turn 1, again it's something you see multiple drivers do regularly at turn 1. And Lando did visibly push him off. Watch the onboard, Max was ahead at the apex and Lando specifically turned his steering wheel to the left in the middle of a right hand turn forcing Max off. The fact that Norris was only doing this to avoid Piastri is not relevant. Max did nothing wrong there and gave the place back anyway, which he probably didn't need to do.

Obviously Max's comments on the radio could have been much better judged, but his complaints were well founded. The car was handling poorly, they've been more and more off the pace of their competitors with each passing race with a car that has been increasingly difficult to drive, just look at where a top quality driver like Perez is ending up recently as he can't drive the wheels off the thing on a knife edge like Max can. Meanwhile the strategy he was put on was a disaster. Hungaroring is well known as being the most difficult tracks on the entire calendar to pass on other than Monaco, so running a strategy that required passing multiple competitive cars was never going to work. It was inevitable Max would get frustrated and some of that would come out.

Honestly I think GP did an absolutely terrible job though. Max's complaining was nothing out of the ordinary for an F1 driver, Lewis is of course most famous for it but Lando does it, Fernando does it, pretty much every driver does it. I think Piastri may be the only driver from the top teams I've never heard bitching over the radio. Honestly it's natural with adrenaline flowing when everything is going against you and you're pushing to the limit. What I've never heard though is an engineer getting passive aggressive and escalating and exacerbating things. Normally the engineer is there to calm things down and get the driver back in the right head space, but GP seemed to just want to antagonise Max further and make the frustration worse as the race went on, it was bizarre. I'd be very curious to know how that debrief went down.

As for your final point about different teams, I don't think chasing performance by moving to whatever team you expect to have the best car defines a great champion. Helping lift your existing team into a competitive place and showing loyalty is equally if not more valid. No two situations are the same so it's a completely arbitrary metric to use honestly.

i have always had good time for Norris but this race showed a dark side to his character….he done everything to steal piastris limelight. not a good look for him at all.

Best race I've seen in a long time. Drama and storylines all over the top of the grid.

It was a fairly **** race. I don't watch F1 for team radio "drama".

Hopefully Spa we see more racing instead of that bull*hit yesterday. I really hope sky lose the rights the next time they are up for auction. Fcuking atrcious

Lando didn't win as he's not able to get a good start. The tripe from Croft(I think) about Lando's amazing start, so amazing he was lucky not to be third.