Why Hungarian GP was a race to recover from embarrassing errors

Behind Lewis Hamilton, there was actually a pretty good Hungarian Grand Prix. The trouble for the other 19 drivers in the race was that he simply left them all behind on his way to his 86th Formula 1 career win, from his 90th pole position.

Yet again, Hamilton showed his class in the wet, with a 3.107-second lead on the intermediate rubber at the end of lap one, and from there he was out of reach. As the world champion left his opposition to sort things out between them, attention boiled down to the fight for second place, with Max Verstappen and Valtteri Bottas each on their own quests to make up for earlier errors.

There's no doubt that Verstappen's was the bigger calamity.

After rain had fallen in the hours leading up the race, and with the unusually low temperatures at the Hungaroring not helping the track dry up ahead of the off, the drivers had to take the start on the inters. And on his way to the grid, Verstappen - already having a hard enough time taming his recalcitrant RB16 through practice and qualifying, where he was disappointed to end up a surprise seventh - did the unthinkable. He crashed, by himself, on the way to the grid.

It was clear he was struggling for grip - team boss Christian Horner later said he "went off three times on that lap to the grid" - and when he arrived at the Turn 12, 90-degree right-hander at the start of the final sector it was too much. Verstappen briefly locked his left-front, the car snapped from under him, and he slid - all four wheels locked - into the barriers.

For a driver of his calibre, this was embarrassing. And as Horner later explained, it wasn't just because his pride had taken a hit, but also because of the seemingly impossible job he'd given his Red Bull mechanics. They'd already had to start early on Saturday morning as the team tried to find out what had caused its practice struggles and broke curfew to do that.

"What would usually take an hour and a half, they did in 20 minutes, and completed with 25s to go," explained Horner of the repair, which involved scanning the components that didn't need replacing - the trackrod and pushrod had to be new - with a portable non-destructive testing machine using x-rays. "All credit to them today because without them that result wouldn't have been possible."

The Red Bull crew were "screaming at each other like '10 seconds', 'five seconds', 'put the wheel on', everything," recounted Verstappen, as they raced to get the job done in time. And they pulled it off. Just over 20 minutes after he'd been buried in the barriers, Verstappen was pulling away on the formation lap, ready to charge into Turn 1 with the pack.

"I put my thumbs up and they were like, 'Yeah, it's fixed', so I said, 'OK, well then here we go, let's see'," Verstappen said after the race. "I was doing the formation laps, I was checking the wheels, I was like 'this feels alright'. And during the race, nothing happened, nothing weird happened so it was fully repaired. Crazy."

The first part of Verstappen's mission to go from zero to hero was accomplished at the exit of the race's first corner, which finished off the sequence that stemmed from the day's other big pre-lights-fully-out error.

"I thought the lights went off, and anyway I was kind of half-seeing the start lights because of the halo and the position I was [on the grid]. It was an odd situation" Valtteri Bottas

Where Verstappen had made his mistake with minutes to go, Bottas's came just as the lights changed. He jerked forwards, stopped, re-engaged his clutch, and then pulled away as Hamilton was surging into the lead he would never really lose.

Bottas's mistake, which he said was caused by him reacting "to a light on my dash that went off" - meant he was sixth at the end of the first lap after being swamped on the run to the first corner. He later clarified the dash light changing: "The main page of the dash changed to different colour or something - a pretty bright colour.

"That's all it needed for me to react. I thought the lights went off, and anyway I was kind of half-seeing the start lights because of the halo and the position I was [on the grid]. It was an odd situation."

He certainly crossed the yellow marker line as the lights were changing before he stopped, but Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff reckoned afterwards he "didn't cross the sensor" embedded in the asphalt and in any case the stewards did not intervene.

Verstappen had a pretty clear launch from seventh as he followed the fast-starting Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc past Bottas, and the equally slow-starting Racing Point of Sergio Perez, who "went straight into a lot of wheelspin". As his red rivals stole to the inside, Verstappen opted to avoid the "traffic jam into the corner" and stayed on the outside, despite the greasy conditions making the normal racing line somewhat more treacherous as he braked. No matter, it got him alongside Vettel and when the Ferrari slid accelerating away in an unexpected third place belonged to the Red Bull.

In Hamilton's wake (if a wake can still exist after 5.381s, the gap to second at the end of lap two of 70) Verstappen chased Lance Stroll, who was the immediate beneficiary of Bottas's startline faux pas. But, with a drying line already evident as the cars were on the formation lap, the race to shed the green-walled inters was on.

Hamilton and Stroll pitted at the end of lap three, but Verstappen stayed out for an extra lap, which he felt was "a good call, to jump [Stroll] - because also you don't want to go too quickly to a slick". He used his free air to great effect, ending up nearly two seconds clear in second place by the end of lap five, with Hamilton now 7.815s away and already "managing those mediums".

But it wasn't Stroll who was running behind Verstappen. Remarkably, it was the Haas duo, Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean. Both had benefited from a (later to be controversial) pitstop at the end of the formation lap to take slicks. In Magnussen's case, he was swapping extreme wet rubber for mediums, after which he took the start from the pitlane.

The Haas drivers slipped and slid their way around the damp early laps, but slicks were clearly the right tyres to be on as they rocketed from last, past their P16 and P18 grid spots, up to third and fourth.

Although Stroll was able to dispatch Grosjean into Turn 1 on lap seven, it took him nearly 10 laps to pass Magnussen, which he did with another late dive up the inside of the first corner. Magnussen clearly knew there was no point in fighting too hard, despite his usual zest for combat, as the Racing Point is effectively in another class these days.

But the delay meant Stroll was now 15.722s behind Verstappen, which, although it ebbed and flowed early in the first dry tyre stint as they negotiated the traffic on the tight track, eventually grew to 18.090s the lap before Stroll pitted for another set of used mediums on lap 35.

At this point, it looked for a moment as if Verstappen was in a race of his own in second, redemption basically secure. But that was immediately threatened again by Bottas - now on his own drive of atonement, and doing it adequately.

The Finn had pitted at the end of lap two behind Charles Leclerc, who took on softs in what appeared to be, and was later confirmed by Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto, a gamble that more rain would arrive in the early stages. Bottas was given mediums, although he, like so many others, was warned to expect rain that ultimately never came.

After Vettel had been delayed in the pits, Bottas chased Leclerc for sixth for the next eight laps - briefly getting by using the second DRS zone on the run to the long left of Turn 2 on lap eight. But that move was scuppered by a puddle on the left-hand side of the track, which robbed Bottas of grip and meant he was fortunate not to wipe out Leclerc, who was scampering around the outside of the corner.

Verstappen pitted on lap 36, and when he rejoined his lead over Bottas was 7.2s. It had been 18.09s over Stroll three tours before, but Bottas lighting up the timing screens with a string of fastest laps meant the gap was coming crashing down

Lesson learned, Bottas made sure to get the move done by the exit of Turn 1 at the start of lap 10, and he quickly caught and passed Grosjean. As Stroll dithered behind Magnussen, Bottas homed in, and dispatched Magnussen with a flash to the inside of the first corner at the start of lap 17, one tour after the Racing Point had taken third.

Over the next 17 laps, Bottas pressured Stroll, but without at any point looking as if he could suddenly spring past. Instead, Bottas did his last bit of overtaking via a strategy call, with Mercedes calling him in for fresh mediums at the end of lap 33. Effectively, this was an attempt to undercut the Racing Point, and the decision to keep Stroll out for two more laps is perhaps what he was referring to when he said afterwards "maybe we could have done things differently". But given the ultimate pace of a Mercedes in clean air, Racing Point was caught in a bind and Bottas was by.

Verstappen pitted on lap 36, and when he rejoined his lead over Bottas was 7.2s. It had been 18.09s over Stroll three tours before, but Bottas lighting up the timing screens with a string of fastest laps meant the gap was coming crashing down.

Bottas managed to get Verstappen's advantage down to 1.009s on lap 45, but it went out again as they surfed their way through the traffic. On lap 49, with the gap at 1.925s, Mercedes pulled the trigger again, with Bottas coming for what felt like an early, and possibly unnecessary, third stop - this time for hard tyres.

But Wolff explained that staying out and trailing Verstappen "would have been wrong, because Valtteri's tyre started to grain on the left quite heavily because he was pushing so hard". So, Mercedes did what did it so effectively at this race in 2019 to steal the win from Verstappen, and pulled its driver in to give him a late-race tyre advantage over the Red Bull.

"We think he would have run out of tyre anyway," Wolff explained. "And putting him onto a new hard, like we did last year with Lewis, was actually the only chance of trying to snatch P2."

Again, Bottas had to charge back, with Red Bull trapped in the opposite way to how it was in the previous weekend's Styrian GP, as Verstappen would have likely lost out to the undercut had he covered Bottas's strategy.

The gap was 21.523s at the end of lap 50, with Bottas getting a 20-lap dash to retake the place behind Hamilton that he had squandered at the start. The deficit did tumble, but not as dramatically as it might have done, however much the late-race charge mirrored Hamilton's rise to victory 12 months ago.

"It was a bit like last year," said Verstappen. "I was just trying to focus on my own pace. I can't suddenly go half a second faster so I was just trying to manage the tyres. It was all looking quite good, but then at the end there was a bit of traffic and as soon as you get within like three seconds you get the disturbed air and, especially when you are on older tyres, that's not very nice. [But] the tyres still felt pretty OK towards the end."

And that, allied with "quite a few backmarkers I had to go through" is what ultimately proved to be Bottas's undoing. He got within DRS range with two laps to go, but was never close enough to put in a move, and Verstappen hung on to take second. Despite the scare he gave his team before the race, any performance that keeps a Mercedes out of the top two is a fine one - worthy of remembrance and redemption.

"[Verstappen] paid them back in the best possible way," Horner said of his mechanics. "But this result is very much down to the work on the grid and in the garages again."

As good as Verstappen was once the racing got under way, Hamilton was better. His talk of managing his tyres didn't mean this was a cruise, as the lower temperatures meant he couldn't "really back off a lot because you lose temperature in the tyres".

"So it was still important that I stayed on top of it, otherwise when tyre temperatures drop that's when they degrade more," Hamilton added.

And despite his irresistible rise to victory and 25 points, there was something that Bottas could have stolen back, despite the big gap between the Mercedes team-mates at the end: the fastest lap point.

Bottas looked to have sealed this with his late-race tyre advantage compared to the rest of the leaders. But Hamilton, with the fact he'd "lost world championships in the past by one point" - the 2007 campaign - wasn't giving up on that bonus prize. And thanks to his crushing margin up front he could afford the luxury of pitting for fresh softs on lap 66.

"I think round one [at the Red Bull Ring] was multiple different punches that I wasn't perhaps ready for, but I refocused, which I try to do between every race, and the last two have been fantastic" Lewis Hamilton

Here came perhaps the only down note (and this really is splitting hairs) on a day that Hamilton called a "pretty flawless" for his squad. Before the race, Mercedes had not been planning to chase the fastest lap point given the natural risks of any pitstop, but it had been eying the potential for a safety car to wreck Hamilton's fine work late-on and thought about bringing him in to ward off this possibility for good with 10 laps to go.

On lap 63, the Mercedes mechanics then appeared ready with softs but went back in as Hamilton's lead was "never quite comfortable enough" due to traffic, according to Wolff. But three laps later it was secure and the dominant leader, who was still setting personal best times on 29-lap-old mediums came in to get his desired red-walled tyres (which had proved not to be good race tyres in the limited long runs in FP1, which made Ferrari's call to take them early on with Leclerc all the more baffling).

In the end, Hamilton was able to use his fresh rubber to set two fastest laps, the second of which came on his triumphant final tour. He took the flag 8.702s clear of Verstappen and earned a maximum score, which gives him a five-point lead heading into F1's next triple-header, which begins with two races on home soil for Hamilton at Silverstone.

"It was one of my favourite races and whilst I was on my own for the race it was just a different kind of challenge," he said of his victory. "Of course we had great pace but it couldn't have been without these great guys that are working, that did great pitstops, great strategy. Right at the end there, because I was managing those mediums for a long, long time, it was great to get on the fresh tyre and get the extra point.

"I think round one [at the Red Bull Ring] was multiple different punches that I wasn't perhaps ready for, but I refocused, which I try to do between every race, and the last two have been fantastic. This weekend [I was] on point throughout the weekend so I need to keep this up."