F1 Talk: Hamilton becomes the Hungaroking

Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes were dominant at the Hungaroring. Pole position, fastest lap and an eight win in Budapest to take the championship lead.

It really is a dream combination at the moment – Hamilton and Mercedes.

The Mercedes W11 is one of the greatest F1 cars ever. It has the most power, the most efficient power unit, the best on high and low downforce tracks, the fastest in slow, medium and high speed corners, easy on the tyres and able to get the Pirellis in the right window relatively easily. It’s the class of the field, could it even win every race this season?

As for Hamilton, once he’s leading after the first turn he’s pretty tough to beat. He knows how to control everything and the team are simply incredible.

Even though Mercedes know they have one hand on the championship already, they still bring the intensity and have the mindset to obliterate the rest of the field.

It was not quite the perfect weekend for Mercedes as Valtteri Bottas completely messed up his start.

Bottas did not receive a penalty because according to the stewards he did not go outside his box when the lights went out.

For me, the rules have to change. It should simply be if you move before the lights go out then you get a penalty.

Otherwise, we may see drivers intentionally moving the car slightly before the lights go out (just like Bottas did) which makes other drivers react and then they get a penalty for jumping the start because they have reacted to the movement of another car.

When drivers are in the zone they will react to any movement at the start so it is a dangerous rule and precedent that allows drivers to move before the lights go out.

Bottas struggled once again in the traffic. His biggest weakness versus Hamilton is not only raw race pace but making overtakes quickly and losing as little time as possible.

He was stuck behind Lance Stroll for quite a while despite having the best car on the grid and then he could not overtake Max Verstappen, even with a different strategy.

It was a carbon copy of last year with Hamilton not quite being able to overtake Verstappen so pitted, chased down Verstappen and overtook him with three laps to go.

Bottas tried the same strategy this year but was unable to do what Hamilton did 12 months ago. This is despite Mercedes’ advantage over Red Bull being bigger this season compared to 2019.

Verstappen drove the wheels off the Red Bull once again but the gap between him and Hamilton will be very disheartening for him and the team.

The team were perplexed as to why they struggled so much. Both Verstappen and Alexander Albon did not look comfortable in the car and Red Bull had to revert to their pre-season testing aero package.

If the issues cannot be resolved then Red Bull will find themselves under serious pressure from Racing Point who have improved drastically this season.

Racing Point finally showed their cards with a superb qualifying. Lance Stroll was very impressive too, having the upper hand over teammate Sergio Perez throughout the weekend. I am sure podiums will come there way and it will be fascinating to see how Stroll performs in the next few races.

Ferrari got the strategy completely wrong in the race and it cost Charles Leclerc badly. Most teams knew that the soft tyre was essentially a qualifying tyre yet Ferrari opted to put Leclerc on that tyre after the short intermediate stint.

Leclerc was defending for most of the race and then had to endure a long stint on the hard tyres. A slow pitstop for Sebastian Vettel proved costly too and put him in the pack when he should have been in clean air. Operational errors and poor choice of strategy will make a massive difference in the midfield this year.

McLaren will be disappointed too after such a strong showing in Austria. Lando Norris had a horrible start as McLaren struggled with their high downforce package.

The team need to improve some of their strategy calls and pitstops as its costing them precious time. Hungary is such a hard track to follow and overtake on and both Norris and Carlos Sainz suffered from bad track position in the grand prix.

Haas will be furious that they lost precious points after both drivers received a 10-second time penalty for getting instructions given to them on the formation lap. An outrageous decision in my opinion, as discussed in the latest Driver Ratings article.

Williams got both cars into Q2 for the first time since Mexico 2018 including a brilliant lap from George Russell. However, race pace appears to be the problem for Williams as they struggle to get the tyres in the right window.

Russell and Nicholas Latifi will remain with the team for 2021. The problem for Russell is that people expect Russell to beat Latifi, and it is hard to say how well he is doing because he is not against a bigger name.

For example, Norris will be up against Daniel Ricciardo at McLaren next year and if Norris beats the Australian his stock will rise significantly. This is the danger for Russell, and he has to be thinking about his career after 2021.

We finally have a two week break then with two Silverstone races and the Spanish Grand Prix to come in August. Championship over? It will take some bad luck for Hamilton to not succeed for a record-equalling seventh world title.