Fourteen days after Silverstone, McLaren ended the Hungarian Grand Prix with another trophy and another second place, once again, best of the rest behind Max Verstappen. The parallels are obvious – but so are the differences – and the British and Hungarian Grands Prix were very, very different.

The MCL60 has undergone a significant upgrade across recent weeks – but certain elements of design philosophy are baked into the car, with traits stretching back at-least several seasons. The nature of F1 is that upgrades tend to enhance strengths, rather than rectify weaknesses...

Our cars going well on circuits with high-speed corners in cool conditions – as was the case in Silverstone (and to a lesser extent, Austria) was a very different proposition to red-hot, low-speed Hungary. While the team were optimistic the car would prosper, there wasn’t any firm consensus on how it would fare on the tight, twisting Hungaroring with track temperatures north of 50°C.

Added to this, we finally had the delayed introduction of the Alternative Tyre Allocation. We were supposed to see this at Imola before the grand prix was cancelled. Instead, it arrived at a track with very high degradation, where Pirelli had already decided to move their tyres a step softer than the previous season. Interesting times indeed.

In association with FxPro and with exclusive insight from McLaren F1 Director of Strategy and Sporting Randy Singh, here’s how the Hungarian Grand Prix unfolded...

The race in a nutshell

• Clean start, Oscar jumps from P4 to P2, passing Lando and Lewis Hamilton, Lando passes Hamilton to hold P3

• Lap 17, Lando pits, swaps Medium for new Hard

• Lap 18, Oscar pits, swaps Medium for new Hard, comes out behind Lando

• Lap 42, Oscar pits, swaps Hard for used Medium

• Lap 44, Lando pits, swaps Hard for used Medium

• Lap 47, Oscar drops to (effective) P4, passed by Sergio Pérez

• Lap 57, Oscar drops to P5, passed by Hamilton

The race in numbers

	Lando Norris	Oscar Piastri
Starting Position	P3	P4
End of First Lap	P3	P2
Finishing Position	P2	P5
Speed Trap	305.1km/h (17th)	304.9km/h (18th)
Pit-stop #1	21.541 (9th of 36)	21.171 (3rd)
Pit-stop #2	21.430 (7th)	22.030 (20th)
Fastest Lap	1:22.178s (4th)	1:22.736s (8th)

The tyres

Lando’s compound strategy: New Medium>New Hard>Used Medium

Oscar’s compound strategy: Used Medium>New Hard>Used Medium

The Strategy… in theory

The Hungarian Grand Prix was always likely to be a two-stop race – it had been in 2022 and looked like being the case again.

In the past, track position was key at the Hungaroring, making the one-stop race the preference – but that has changed in recent years: the high levels of degradation, combined with the 2022 aerodynamic reboot have made passing into T1 a much less difficult proposition, so fastest pace to the end of the race, rather than track position, has started to dictate strategy decisions… to an extent. 

What really happened

There was plenty happening at the Hungaroring but the two McLaren cars stuck to the script, making two stops in the main sequence. Oscar started the race on a lightly used set of Mediums from his aborted second run in Q2, whilst Lando started on a new set of Mediums.

Oscar hooked-up a great start and passed both Lando and Lewis Hamilton to take P2, whilst Lando got past Hamilton to maintain P3. They fell slowly back from leader Verstappen but maintained a small advantage over the chasing pack. Lando pitted for new Hards on Lap 17, Oscar followed for the same on Lap 18, during which time they swapped position. Lando pulled away during the second stint, opening a gap of nine seconds by the time Oscar pitted for a used Medium tyre on Lap 42.

Lando followed two laps later and also took a used Medium. Sergio Pérez pitted directly behind Oscar – who had suffered damage to his floor - catching and passing him on Lap 47. He continued to fall back, and was passed by Hamilton on Lap 57, coming home P5. Lando, however, had enough of a margin over the recovering Pérez to maintain P2, crossing the line 3.8 seconds ahead of the Mexican.

The strategy explained

Starting on a Medium tyre has been the strategy of choice at most races this year, for cars starting in the ‘correct’ positions. It provides good grip off the line and allows the team the maximum flexibility to cope with unexpected race conditions. The ATA didn’t change the equation, with the majority of the top 10 starters choosing that tyre.

Lando was running two seconds ahead of Hamilton when the Mercedes pitted on Lap 16. Given the high level of degradation and the potential for a powerful undercut, Lando followed on the next lap, and then Oscar pitted one lap later. Both held position ahead of Hamilton, but the undercut worked in Lando’s favour, bringing him out ahead of Oscar.

“We decided it was sensible to pit with both cars after Lewis did,” says Randy Singh, Director, Strategy and Sporting. “Lando was pitted first because he was most at risk. Both of our stops were really, really good, and we expected Lando to come out ahead – because the undercut power was high here, as is often the case when tyres are experiencing high degradation.

“We didn’t mind that because we always do what’s best for the team, rather than favouring the individual drivers. By the time Oscar pitted, we knew Lewis was slow at the start of his stint, but we decided to still box Oscar because it would give him time to bring the tyres in.

“Fitting the new Hards was a relatively simple decision. We always intended to run them in the middle stint, because it provides you with a nice, long stint and the freedom to choose which tyre you want for the end of the race, when you’ve learnt a bit more – both from your own cars and what other people are doing.”

If the start of the second stint had been relatively comfortable, the situation was different as the second round of stops approached, with the chasing cars exhibiting good pace and Oscar in particular, having difficulty maintaining a gap. Having expressed a preference for the Medium tyre over the Hard, he pitted for a second stop on Lap 42, with Pérez and Hamilton looming large in his mirrors, but far enough into the race to swap to a Medium.

“Drivers were using their tyre budget in different ways across the stint,” says Randy. “It can look a little stressful when the gap is going out and then suddenly starts coming back – but analysing it over the whole stint, it doesn’t look that strange. Looking at Lewis, clearly he was conserving his tyres at the start of that stint to deploy some tyre budget later on.

“The main reason we pitted Oscar when we did was the threat from Lewis and Checo behind. What we didn’t want was to see Oscar undercut. He was clearly struggling a bit with the tyre – though later we discovered he had some damage which will have contributed to that – and so we decided to pit. It gave him the best opportunity to stay ahead of those cars – had he allowed them to undercut him, he would never have had a chance to recover.”

Lando pitted two laps after Oscar. While not under pressure, he was in the right window for his stop. “It was just the right time for the quickest race,” says Randy. “We didn’t want to take the Hard tyres too far and allow them to degrade, but also we wanted to do a decent stint on the Mediums, and allow Lando time to bring them in.”

The choice of used Mediums vs used Hards for the final stint wasn’t something that the team had firm ideas about, pre-race. The eventual decision to take the Mediums came from analysis of pace across the opening stints, but also the views of the drivers, based on how the cars felt in the first two stints. “The choice was always flexible, and honestly, we weren’t sure which way to go – but starting the race Medium>Hard gave us the best opportunity to learn and make an informed decision,” says Randy. “I suspect most teams were in a similar position, given there had been limited running of the Hard tyre on Friday.”

How did the Alternative Tyre Allocation affect strategy in Hungary?

Designed to reduce the volume of tyres that have to be freighted to the track, ATA affects the race in many different ways. It reduces the number of slick tyre sets available from 13 to 11, which means four, rather than six sets are available for use across practice. Secondly, it changes the composition of the allocation, with fewer Soft and Medium sets (four each) and more Hards (three).

It requires all three tyre types to be used in qualifying (Hard in Q1, Medium Q2, Soft Q3), which means teams running at the front will have both a wider selection of tyres available for the race but also fewer new tyres in that allocation. It is, to summarise, a completely different sort of race to understand.

“It’s definitely harder – and I think you saw teams adapting to the demands in different ways,” says Randy. “Teams used their tyres at different times in practice, and approached the race in different ways and that automatically makes it more challenging – and that’s interesting because you have more difficult decisions to make.

“It’s hard to say what tyres we would have taken forward into qualifying on a normal weekend, but certainly with ATA there were more permutations to understand in the race – but also more constraints with everyone having used tyres. We’re still studying it, and will be over the next few weeks, but I’d say, from a strategy point of view, it was more interesting, more challenging and had more scope for us to have an impact on the outcome of the race – one way or the other. And of course, one of the big aims is to become more sustainable as a sport and it certainly achieved good steps in that direction.”

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