Why Ferrari had the Hungary strategy shocker that helped Verstappen to an unlikely win

After Max Verstappen's difficult qualifying left him 10th on the grid for the Hungarian Grand Prix, few expected him to take an eighth victory of the 2022 Formula 1 season. Yet that's precisely what happened as Ferrari converted second and third on the grid into fourth and sixth at the flag with a bungled strategy that cost Charles Leclerc yet more ground in the title race

Matt Kew Aug 1, 2022, 8:29 AM

Upd: Aug 2, 2022, 11:55 PM

When your two biggest rival teams laugh in derision at your strategy calls, clearly something critical has gone awry. That’s what occurred in the Hungaroring driver cooldown room last Sunday, as the podium finishers checked out the hastily edited highlights of the 70 laps not long concluded.

Runner-up Lewis Hamilton seemed a touch bemused when he clocked a moment in the video and had to check with Max Verstappen. “They were on the hards?”, he asked. The surprise victor tittered “Yeah” in reply as third-placed George Russell couldn’t entirely suppress a smile.

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Author Matt Kew

Matt Kew is Autosport’s F1 Editor, a role he has held since March 2022 following stints covering Formula E, Extreme E and the British Touring Car Championship.

Matt joined Autosport in 2018 to work predominantly on the magazine, but his relentless quoting of Alan Partridge meant office colleagues soon thought he would be better-suited to increased field work.

Needless to say, Matt had the last laugh when he won the Motorsport UK Young Journalist of the Year Award in 2019.

His interest in motorsport was sparked by regular trips to watch ASCAR crash around Rockingham’s banked oval.

Matt read politics and philosophy at the University of Sheffield - receiving first-class honours for his dissertation assessing the lack of female participation in top-tier motor racing.

He covered a wide variety of national race and rally meetings for Autosport as a freelancer before joining full-time. His best efforts to argue the merits of historic racing are undone by a questionable taste in music and James Bond actors.