Ferrari’s struggles lead Hungarian Grand Prix storylines

Formula 1 returns this weekend with the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The first half of the 2024 season was full of incredible moments with Lando Norris finally tasting victory, Charles Leclerc finally tasting victory on his home turf and Lewis Hamilton finally tasting victory again.

How will the second half unfold?

It all kicks off with a trip to the Hungaroring, here are the key storylines from this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

Can Ferrari make a comeback?

Sometimes a picture really is worth 1,000 words.

For example:

provider Formula 1 Points, Here’s the points progression for the top four teams in the F1 Constructors’ Championship standings: As you can see, Ferrari is now just 24 points behind Red Bull after Charles Leclerc won his home race and erased the bitterness of his years at the Monaco Grand Prix.

But since then, Ferrari has scored just 50 points in the four race weekends since Monaco, meaning McLaren and Mercedes are closing in on Ferrari and Red Bull is further behind.

Can Ferrari steer the ship in the right direction?

If he does, he’ll have a week to learn what worked, and perhaps more importantly, what didn’t, with the upgrade package the team put into the SF-24 when the triple-header began. Since then, neither Leclerc nor teammate Carlos Sainz Jr. have had full confidence in the car, but Leclerc especially. “We’re just slow. We’re really slow right now and there’s a lot of inconsistency with the car,” said Leclerc, following his shock exit in Q2 at Silverstone. “I don’t think it helps much either, trying to assess the situation we’re in and understand which direction we should go.”

Ferrari had another week to solve the problems with the SF-24. Could they find the answers they needed?

Has McLaren learned its lesson?

A year ago McLaren were fighting for the podium.

Now they’re fighting for wins and maybe a championship.

But life at the front is tougher and every decision, good or bad, adds up and has consequences. The past two race weekends have demonstrated that and made it clear that McLaren needs to learn if they are to win this battle.

The Austrian Grand Prix is ​​an example of the micro-level learning that McLaren needs to do to win at the front. Lando Norris was battling Max Verstappen, who had been at the front for years. What was the result of this collision between Norris and Verstappen? Wheel contact late in the race dropped both drivers out of the competition, and Norris out of the race completely.

Then there was the British Grand Prix. As has been discussed here and elsewhere, McLaren were in a position to potentially finish one-two, with Norris leading the pack and team-mate Oscar Piastri trailing behind, but from there a few strategies went awry, starting with Piastri making the same decision to switch to intermediate tyres one lap after Norris had pitted.

This dropped Piastri down the rankings, and although he managed to recover to finish in fourth place, he quickly realised that his decision had cost him further opportunities.

Then, late in the race, the team forced Norris to pit and change from intermediates to slicks. Norris was leading ahead of Lewis Hamilton, but Mercedes forced Hamilton to pit one lap before Norris and make the same change. When Norris pitted the next lap, he overshot his position by a few feet, leading to his pit stop. He came out of one pit stop in McLaren (since there is only one pit stop per team at Silverstone, they didn’t double-stack Norris and Piastri ahead of him), trying in vain to get ahead of Hamilton, but could only watch as the silver W15 rocketed past him and took the lead.

The final mistake? Bolting soft tyres onto Norris’ MCL38s. The high level of tyre degradation meant that not only was Norris unable to catch Hamilton and reclaim the lead, he also couldn’t hold off a red-hot Verstappen on the hard tyre.

“I don’t think it was the right decision for us to go with the soft tyre,” says McLaren team principal Andrea Stella. Hospitalized after the race.

Since the British Grand Prix, some media have highlighted how many points McLaren lost over the two race weekends and how their standings might have changed had circumstances been different, but it’s over now and the question facing McLaren now is whether they learn the right lessons from those weekends and apply them going forward.

Their first chance to show us what they’ve learned is this weekend.

Who will win on Saturday on Sunday?

What is the most common nickname for the Hungaroring?

“Monaco without barriers”

The circuit is tight and twisty, with lots of curves and not many straights. As Haas F1 team principal Ayao Komatsu explained during the team’s media preview on Monday, the team has a Monaco-level downforce package for the Hungarian Grand Prix. “Budapest is a circuit with high downforce and short straights. It’s basically Monaco-style in terms of downforce, so of course we’ll bring Monaco-level downforce and combine it with the Silverstone updates. We know we were faster on the straights in Monaco, but of course the upgrades give us more aerodynamic downforce. We’re excited to see what we can do in Hungary,” said Haas F1 team principal.

What else is important in Hungary?

Qualifying.

Just like in Monaco, if you want to win the Hungarian Grand Prix, your best bet is to start from the front.

“[Hungary] “It will be a totally different challenge to Silverstone because it’s all about qualifying,” Komatsu said. “Overtaking is very difficult at the Hungaroring, so we will be focusing on qualifying.”

This could be good news for both Ferrari and McLaren. Some things have changed since the Monaco Grand Prix at the end of May, but in Monaco Charles Leclerc took pole position, with Oscar Piastri starting behind him, while Carlos Sainz Jr. qualified third and Lando Norris fourth. Outside of these four drivers, George Russell took fifth place in the W15, while Max Verstappen had to settle for sixth.

Which drivers and teams perform best on Saturday will play a big role in determining which will perform best on Sunday.

Could temperature be a factor?

The temperature was high at the Hungarian Grand Prix one year ago. It reached 28°C.and the corresponding track Temperature: 53 degrees It was the highest track temperature recorded in the entire 2023 F1 season.

It may get even hotter this weekend.

Current forecasts suggest temperatures will be in the 34 degree range on Sunday as Hungary is in the midst of a cold wave. Extreme heat The heat has affected this region. Hungarian airports to close next weekThe concrete surface of the runway at Debrecen International Airport expanded, damaging two concrete slabs.

What does this mean for the team this weekend?

It’s difficult to get the tires into position and keep them there.

The layout of the circuit is quite hard on the tyres due to the high levels of downforce, but also take qualifying into account – see how the laps end.

The third sector of the lap features a short straight from Turn 11 to Turn 12, which starts with two 180-degree turns, before a long straight from Turn 14 through the start/finish line to Turn 1. This demands a lot from the tyres and the drivers at the end of the push lap, as Pirelli, F1’s exclusive tyre supplier, said in the media preview for the Hungarian Grand Prix. “Overheating is therefore an element that must be controlled not only in the race but also in qualifying. With the softest compounds, the drivers need to reach the last two 180-degree corners of the flying lap with enough grip left, which is not an easy task, since the tyres do not have enough time on the short straight sections of the track,” Pirelli outlined in the media preview.

With Saturday being a crucial day in the qualifying season given how difficult overtaking is at the Hungariring, teams may be paying as much attention to the weather as they do to what’s happening on the track.

Will this year’s trophy remain on the podium?

Last year’s podium celebration (featuring Norris and Verstappen) was one of the most humorous moments of the season.

Norris celebrated his second place finish by slamming a bottle of sparkling wine onto Verstappen’s podium and then popping the bottle open.

This caused the custom-made, hand-painted porcelain trophy that was on Verstappen’s podium to fall and the top part to shatter into pieces.

Herend Porcelain Manufaktur, the company that made the Hungarian Grand Prix trophy, created a new trophy for Verstappen, and Norris attended the trophy ceremony for the second time along with the Red Bull drivers.

Where he received his “bill”:

Will the homemade trophy survive this year’s awards ceremony?