In Hungary, there were some big announcements made off the track, with former Scuderia Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel confirming that he will leave Formula 1 at the end of the 2022 season. On the track, there was another disappointing weekend for the Maranello team.
Ferrari seemed in a strong position to take the race win with Charles Leclerc midway through the race, as the Monegasque was leading the race at the Hungaroring circuit, while his Maranello teammate was running in third and was also on his way to a podium finish. However, another shocking strategic error ruined Charles Leclerc chances of winning the Hungarian Grand Prix: the Monegasque went from leading the race, to finishing in sixth place after the Italian side decided to call him in and fit the Hard compound, while he was P1 and setting good lap times with the medium tyre.
The Maranello team still used the hardest compound on Sunday, despite the fact that official tyre supplier Pirelli advised all teams that it would not be a good tyre for the due to the cool track temperatures which made it difficult to bring it in the correct operating window. As a result, Ferrari handed over another easy win to Red Bull and Max Verstappen, losing even more ground in both the Constructors’ and the Drivers’ Championships, with an almost impossible task after the summer break.
British former racing driver Martin Brundle, currently a Sky Sports F1 commentator, admitted that Scuderia Ferrari’s strategy in Hungary made “no sense”, and that their errors had become “reasonably frequent”, after was was seen on the streets of Monte Carlo and at the Silverstone circuit:
“The Ferrari team keep it tight and support each other on these reasonably frequent errors of late, but however you paint it they somehow navigated a fast car from second and third on the grid to finish fourth and sixth. That was all compounded by surprisingly poor pace on the soft compound tyres on a cool day with constant spots of rain around, but the medium/medium strategy pitting for the second time a little over half distance made no sense.” – he added.
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Mercedes unfortunately got the strategy right and as a result finished with both drivers on the podium, ahead of the Ferrari F1-75 cars, with Lewis Hamilton taking second place, his best result of the current campaign. The seven-time World Champion lengthened his second stint and completed the race with a strong last stint on the Soft tyres, which was exactly what Ferrari should have done with Charles Leclerc: “Equally impressive was two stopping Lewis Hamilton from seventh on the grid. The Mercedes really did use the soft tyres well in the closing stages and Lewis rose to the occasion as usual for his fifth straight podium. He and the team did make a medium/medium/soft tyre strategy work by pitting on lap 51, just to torment Ferrari a little more.” – Martin Brundle added.
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