Magical Hamilton finished first, Verstappen with three thousand

Lewis Hamilton celebrated the 104th pole of his long career. The Briton, after a long battle with Max Verstappen, will start from pole position.

Hamilton on his final attempt was three millimeters faster than the Dutchman after stopping the clock at 1:16.609 to take pole from Verstappen’s 1:16.612.

Behind them, McLaren will start with Norris and Bestre again to present a great picture, while Zhao will start from fifth with Leclerc sixth. The rest of the top 10 was completed by Bottas, Alonso, Perez and Hülkenberg.

At the start of the proceedings, there were several drivers who took on the disqualifications of Leclerc, Saint and Hamilton to escape from it on their last attempt. Instead, Russell was unsuccessful, and was eliminated along with Albon, Tsunoda, Magnussen and Sargent.

The surprises continued in the second quarter. Ferrari was again threatened with elimination with Sainz rounding out the top ten, 2 milliseconds slower than Alonso who was tenth. Apart from the Spaniard, Ocon, Ricciardo, Stroll and Gasly were all ruled out.

In today’s Budapest qualifying tests, the system of using hard rubber in Q1, medium rubber in Q2 and soft tires in Q3 was tested for the first time.

Therefore, it was difficult for drivers and teams to switch from one type of tire to another. In the end, the soft rubber seemed to work better for Mercedes and McLaren in the end, while Verstappen continued to not find the perfect balance in the Red Bull RB19’s heavily upgraded settings these three days.

On the drivers’ first attempt in the third quarter, Max Verstappen set the first time, narrowly beating the group set by Norris just before, but on the second time the Dutchman failed to find more pace. Norris was fastest in the early part of the track, but by the end of the lap he had lost a bit of speed and failed to break the Dutchman’s first time.

But Hamilton succeeded, despite a slip or two in closed corners, saying “I gave it all I had on the last lap, there’s nothing left,” to take first place since the Saudi Grand Prix in November 2021, and confirm the flashes of speed he showed in the past two weeks with a vastly improved W14 in his series of upgrades since Monaco GP.

Hamilton was last on track at the end of Q3 to utilize traction at its best, and spoke of a “crazy year and a half, but we haven’t lost confidence” as Mercedes struggled mainly with the W13 and then the W14. He also explained that he was losing time in innings 4 and 11 of the Ungaroring.

For his part, Verstappen addressed the RB19’s instability throughout two weeks and the fact that it didn’t have the feel it would have liked on the final lap, saying he had yet to find the perfect balance for his car – although the significant upgrades made by the Milton Keynes team for this race have paid off.

The two McLarens were impressive, closing out the second row of the grid with Norris and Bestre the fastest in the circuit’s second section. At a circuit very different from Silverstone, McLaren’s competitiveness underscores the huge leap the Woking team has made in recent weeks.

Guanyu Chow was equally impressive, taking an unrecognizable Alfa Romeo to fifth on the grid ahead of the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc, the Alfa of Valtteri Bottas and Fernando Alonso who was 1 millisecond slower than the Finn.

Sergio Pérez had another miserable Saturday as he finished nearly half a second behind Verstappen in ninth, while the impressive Nico Hulkenberg again held off Haas to round out the top ten.

The two big surprises of the first two sessions were George Russell’s exclusion from Q1 – due to traffic he encountered while standing last on the track before his final attempt, and Carlos Sainz from Q2 and the top ten. The Spaniard was ahead of Alonso by three hundredths of a second.

Earlier in Q2, Verstappen’s first time was eliminated for going over the track limits at Turn 5, but the Dutchman eventually qualified on his second attempt – costing him an extra set of medium tyres.

As for Daniel Ricciardo, on his return – with Alpha Tauri – he managed to emerge victorious in the inside battle with Yuki Tsunoda – who was eliminated in Q1 – and won 13th on the grid in a car he wasn’t driving until yesterday.

The Hungarian Grand Prix, Formula 1’s 11th race of the year, starts tomorrow (Sunday 23/7) at 16:00 and it will be interesting to see if Mercedes – with its good race pace – can deny Red Bull the record for all season wins – to revive their battle with Max Verstappen from two years ago.