Hungaroring proved again that it’s not a great track for F1 as far as entertainment goes, but thankfully we were given generous helpings of drama from almost every team as compensation. And we did get a nice battle between Verstappen and Hamilton… at least until Max completely lost his head.

The race seemed primed for strategy battles, but not much exciting came of it. The early undercutters didn’t really accomplish anything, the only thing of note I think was Yuki who managed to make the one-stop work and claimed two solid points off it. Perez actually pulled off a recovery drive up to 7th, too, which at this point is a surprising success. He was struggling to overtake slow cars early on, but starting on the hard tyre played in his favour here.

McLaren again really displaying the incompetence of their pitwall, which is so disheartening. Yes, Norris should have just checked his ego, but he shouldn’t have been in that position to begin with. Really sullies what should have been a great day for the team, and I feel bad for Oscar as his first win comes with mixed emotions. He did really deserve it off his great start and first stint, but will he feel that way himself?

Don’t have much to say about Max that hasn’t been said already. It’s amazing how fast the idea that he has matured fades as soon as he’s no longer in vastly superior machinery. Turns out it’s easy to be calm when you’re 30 seconds ahead of 2nd and the old Max never left. Maybe this race was exacerbated by lack of sleep, but he was acting like a petulant child all race. Even GP sounded fed up with him, which is fairly rare.

Overall a great show if you like the soap opera side of F1. Lots of tension all over, lots of cracks showing. The biggest takeaway I think is that the Red Bull upgrade package once again failed to deliver the performance they were hoping for. Very interesting for the rest of the season with McLaren continuing to look like the best car out there. It’s a shame they haven’t been able to capitalise more on the past couple of months, but one DNF for Max and it could get sweaty for RBR…