F1 Hungarian GP: Secret things to keep an eye out for

Norris has actually shown he’s capable of instantly bouncing back– Ed Hardy

Kimi Raikkonen, 2007, Sebastian Vettel, 2010 and 2012, plus Lewis Hamilton, 2014, all recent examples of motorists who routed the champion leader by more than 16 points after 13 rounds but still won the world title.

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The 2025 champion fight is far from over and Lando Norris, who is 16 points behind McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri, knows that. Yes, often times this season Norris has been crappy and quite frankly should not be second-best to Piastri provided how the set ended 2024, but there’s still lots of time for him to strike back, and why not this weekend?

He’s done it before, rather just recently in truth. Norris dropped 22 points behind Piastri after his Montreal catastrophe, but reacted completely by winning the next 2 grands prix– Austria and Britain – to slash that deficit to simply 8. It was exactly what Norris needed and he ought to use that as inspiration this weekend having just completed second to Piastri at Medspa– implying the Aussie has actually edged clear once again as title favourite.

Nevertheless, Spa wasn’t completion of the world for Norris, and there’s no doubt he is capable of beating Piastri for the win in Hungary. A win he could have declared last year, had McLaren not mucked up …

How will Mercedes react after “big conference”?– Stuart Codling

George Russell, Mercedes Picture by: Sam Bloxham/ LAT Images through Getty Images For Mercedes the season up until now has been one of two halves: 4 podiums for George Russell in the very first 6 races, and just one in the next 7 — which undoubtedly was a win, in Canada.

The concern is whether it can be solved by the “huge meeting” Russell stated he prepared to have with the engineering bigwigs mid-week. Is George the perfect driver for F1’s modern-day business era? He offered himself into a race seat by means of a PowerPoint discussion, and here he is wishing to solve Mercedes’ down spiral by means of a conference.

What makes discovering a solution more tough is that this problem is depressingly familiar. Last year Mercedes produced a middling vehicle which became worse after the summer break as numerous upgrades failed to achieve the preferred outcome, and the group ended up reverting to a previous flooring specification in Baku (amongst other rollbacks).

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Now the concern appears to be whether the brand-new rear suspension, very first trialled at Imola, is the source of the despair– or the group’s action to the new front-wing deflection tests enforced from Spain onwards. Mercedes’s advancement technique for the rest of the season was aligned around the brand-new wing introduced there.

“Obviously, we had the modification of the front wing in Barcelona,” stated Russell in Spa. “We then went in a somewhat various instructions afterwards to sort of tackle the issue of the modification of front wing.

“And clearly, since that point, we have actually taken a huge action in reverse. So, it might be as basic as simply reverting back to something that we had earlier in the season. Of course, you can’t do that with the front wing, but in regards to the remainder of the set-up. However I don’t understand, it appears rather weird how we’ve presumed in reverse.”

Besides being a dreadful tautology, “reverting back” to a previous specification would be more evidence that the team’s aerodynamic research study ‘tools’ aren’t yet completely optimised. That’s something that absolutely needs to change, even if George mistakenly leaves himself on mute in the meeting …

Could upgrades lastly close up the pack? — Owen Bellwood

Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls Team, Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls Group, Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing Group Picture by: Peter Fox/ Getty Images Teams up and down the grid are rolling out mid-season updates prior to F1 breaks for its annual summertime recess, but this year things are a little various. This year, when F1 returns in Zandvoort groups will be fully concentrated on the advanced brand-new rules set to sweep the series in 2026, so if they hope of improving their fortunes this season, time and resources are going out.

As an outcome, teams have raced to bring brand-new parts to the track, with lots of debuting upgraded elements in Belgium last weekend and the upcoming race in Hungary. The rain that fell on Medical spa somewhat muddied the waters on the updates, but the back-to-back race could paint a clearer image of where groups accumulate.

McLaren’s new low-downforce wing may not be much usage this weekend, but the team is still the one to beat, and Ferrari’s suspension update has done little to close the space up until now. Mercedes likewise isn’t moving forwards any longer, while new aerodynamic parts at Red Bull show that it hasn’t absolutely quit on a 2025 recovery just yet. Even more down the chain of command, new parts at Aston Martin and Racing Bulls guarantee to spice up the midfield– with 4 teams now separated by just eight points.

If these upgrades can bring a boost in performance, groups could reverse their seasons. But, if not, others may surrender and quit all hope of a strong result in 2025.

Verstappen looks specific to stay at Red Bull for 2026, but convincing him to remain long-term starts now– Haydn Cobb

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Picture by: Marcel van Dorst/ EYE4images/ NurPhoto via Getty Images Max Verstappen, both contractually and vocally, is highly indicated to remain at Red Bull for 2026. The Dutch scuba diver will remain in the top three in the motorists’ championship by the summer season break to satisfy a contact clause that starts, while Mercedes boss Toto Wolff made it his intent to maintain both George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

While nothing is ever fully particular in an F1 silly season, all tips point to the four-time F1 world champion going into the brand-new age of grand prix racing at the Milton Keynes-based squad, getting first-hand experience of how the team geared up with its own Ford-backed powertrains will compare against the competition. What’s more, he will likewise be able to examine how the competition stacks up just as the chauffeur market opens wider, giving him a possible avenue at every team– bar McLaren.

So Red Bull, or new team manager Laurent Mekies and the rest of the team’s management personnel, can claim to have kept Verstappen for the short-term, but from the Hungarian GP onwards it is all about encouraging him to remain for the long run. Action and words need to begin now if Verstappen isn’t set to get scratchy feet again.