Can Mercedes continue its race-winning streak in Hungary? (2024)

No team other than Red Bull has won more than two races this season. Remarkably, Mercedes is the only non-Red Bull team to win two consecutive races since Ferrari in 2022.

Ok, George Russell lucked into his win at the Austrian Grand Prix because Max Verstappen decided he wanted to make Lando Norris fight for a victory he was never going to achieve. But it is quite a contrast for Mercedes compared to how lost they were 12 months ago.

Team principal Toto Wolff could not explain why Lewis Hamilton earned his shock Hungaroring pole in 2023 beyond: “If you give him the car, that’s what he can do.” Although they underwent a design philosophy change with the W14, it led them down a garden path and necessitated yet another switch in direction for 2024.

Every team has been chasing that fine line between downforce and stability; too much downforce and you overload the complicated suspension, too little and your car handles like a milk float. Now it seems they have hit that sweet spot Red Bull has been hogging for the last two years with the W15.

At the last race in Silverstone, all it needed was an experienced hand in Hamilton to get the job done. His tribute to race engineer Peter Bonnington, with whom he correctly anticipated the wet-to-dry conditions to win the race, was a fitting end to his Mercedes career. It was the dream team for a reason between 2014 and 2020.

I’m not putting it all down to Hamilton, but he is an important factor - just as Michael Schumacher was in 2012 with Mercedes - to getting them back to this point. In an interview with BBC in 2022, Hamilton spoke of how he often willingly forfeited his weekends to help the team: “It was really about problem-solving: ‘I will sacrifice this session or all the sessions to be able to find more data and information for you, so that when we go back to the factory they’ve got a better understanding of what’s going on.’ It ultimately hindered some of the weekends.”

You should always leave a job better than where it was when you joined it, and Hamilton has effectively achieved that at Mercedes.

So the question is, can they win again in Hungary?

It’s a track that favours the team historically, with Hamilton being the most successful driver on the grid at the Hungaroring with eight wins. The track is tight with only two proper overtaking spots (Turns 1 and 3) which means strategy will play an important role.

It will likely be the hottest race of the year with average temperatures set to hit a maximum of 33°C. As a testament to how hot it is likely to be on track, the asphalt temperatures reached a high of 53°C before lunch. Pirelli’s softest range will be available to the teams but if track temperatures reach those highs, it is likely to be the hardest compound teams opt to run in the race.

The seasonal hot temperatures in Budapest are perhaps the only thing that can derail the current Mercedes hype train, particularly as cooling has been somewhat of a kryptonite for the W15.

Bahrain was the hottest race so far this year and both drivers had to turn down their engines due to temperature issues relating to cooling. They also had to resort to lifting and coasting, creating a spiralling effect whereby the tyres also lost temperature and grip. A nightmare scenario.

Technical director James Allison branded it an “unanswered mystery” while trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin confirmed it was still an issue for the team in Hungary: “The thing where we’ve still got a kind of question mark on performance is rear-limited circuits in hot conditions. It's going to be very hot on Sunday, so that's what we're working on. I wouldn't put us as favourites here.”

McLaren ‘in the fight’ but are they wasting a good car?

The triple-header could not have gone worse for McLaren.

Although they came away with 70 points between Norris and Oscar Piastri - the most of any team - there was a feeling that McLaren was wasting an opportunity by not winning at least one of the Grands Prix.

It was yet more races that got away from Norris, who has lost out on a potential 49 points since Canada by either not finishing or missing out on the race victory. McLaren themselves have not won more than one race in a season since 2012. In the context of a title battle with Verstappen, that is a lot of points to sacrifice.

It showed when Piastri was asked whether McLaren is confident it can mount a title challenge to Red Bull: “We've got a lot of confidence. The gap to Ferrari now in the Constructors' Championship is very small. We're reducing it to Red Bull. At the moment, it's only Max scoring most of the points. I think we can't take for granted that it's always going to be like that

There was a change in tune compared to the start of the season from Norris after Spain when it was clear McLaren had the quickest package, he was no longer happy with being second best.

As Silverstone showed, you wonder whether this newfound performance has slightly caught McLaren off-guard. Not only have they lacked on the pit stop front compared to their rivals, but the communication between Norris and his engineer Will Joseph was chaotic in the build-up to the final pit stops.

The end decision to put Norris on used soft tyres when they had a new medium available was baffling, not least when Piastri fitted his mediums and went half a second quicker. Team principal Andrea Stella said the team would take away some of the decisions on tyres to simplify things, but as Hamilton showed it is the clear communication channels that reward drivers.

Team principal Andrea Stella was asked on Sky Sports whether there were some ‘uncomfortable’ briefings with their drivers after Silverstone: “A Formula 1 team is not run on emotions, otherwise, it would collapse and implode pretty quickly because F1 is a rollercoaster. At Silverstone, there was some pain because we were in the lead and we couldn’t capitalise, but we have a certain approach to missed opportunities.

“For us, missed opportunities are a way to understand ‘Where are our gaps?’ And that’s where we focused; on the opportunity and how we can improve. The focus is not on the missed element of the opportunity. So the briefings are very assuring.”

Hungary will be a test for the team. Even though we can be assured there is no chance of changeable conditions affecting the weekend, strategy is very important considering the small amount of overtaking opportunities. They got all the calls right in Austria but were slightly helped by Red Bull’s new mechanic on Verstappen’s rear left tyre. If they have addressed their weak areas after Silverstone, it will show whether or not they have graduated from being runners-up to a winning team.

Red Bull addresses recent problems with Hungary upgrade

The team with the most eyeballs on them at the next two races before the summer break is Red Bull. Their win margins from the beginning of the season have been slashed significantly and the introduction of their next significant upgrade package in Hungary shows the once-dominant team is under pressure.

It is the first time Red Bull has brought a significant upgrade in-season, with the most noticeable changes on the engine cover. The cannons have now been taken off the car in favour of a more conventional layout, with the bodywork also slimmer towards the rear. Elsewhere there are changes to the halo, rear wheel bodywork, front wing elements, and front wishbone profile.

Technical director Pierre Wache said they intended to introduce them after the summer break, but it has been rushed to Hungary with Verstappen getting all the parts and Perez having everything apart from the new engine/co*ke cover.

The revised engine cooling layout is designed for high downforce circuits like Hungary and when asked if they plan to swap between the old and new-spec at upcoming races, Wache said: “It’s a possibility, that is what we are trying to verify during FP1 and FP2. If the cooling level requirements and track characteristics will push us to change, then yes we will.”

Wache stopped short of blaming one specific area of the car for their problems, but it is understood to link back to their floor upgrade in Imola and the extra downforce it brought that disrupted the stable aero platform that has characterised their cars for the last two years.

“It’s difficult to say it’s coming from this [particular] area of the car. The more that you push the development, the behaviour could start to be tricky - like what you have seen from the others [teams],” said Wache.

The NIBs

Mercedes impacted by Microsoft/Crowdstrike problems

A rather odd story emerged on Friday morning when it appeared companies using Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and an update to Crowdstrike’s anti-viral software.

Several companies including airlines and the Mercedes F1 team were impacted by the outage, with Crowdstrike being one of the team’s partners since the 2021 season.

Andrew Shovlin was asked if the team was impacted: “We've had great support from them and all our partners. There was a bit of work that we had to do and we've got a lot of computers around the garage and in pit walls that all needed updating. But we've we've worked through that and the impact in FP1 was minimal if not nil. It created a bit of work, but we are back where we needed to be now.”

Lando Norris’ tribute to Hungarian GP trophy makers

Many will remember when Norris broke Verstappen’s winner trophy with his signature champagne celebration last year.

The Briton slammed his champagne bottle on the podium and it caused the £35,000 porcelain trophy, which takes six months to make, to topple and smash onto the ground.

Verstappen eventually got a remade version, but makers Herand teamed up with Norris to design his helmet for this weekend. The design is handpainted by the porcelain art specialists at the company and features more than 800 different colours of Herend.

The basis of the pattern was inspired by the “Hungarian motifs” (“Motifs Hongrois”) decor with the elements of Transylvanian embroideries of the 15th – 17th centuries.