F1 Hungarian GP: Key things to watch out for

Norris has shown he’s capable of immediately bouncing back – Ed Hardy

Kimi Raikkonen, 2007, Sebastian Vettel, 2010 and 2012, plus Lewis Hamilton, 2014, all recent examples of drivers who trailed the championship leader by more than 16 points after 13 rounds but still won the world title.

The 2025 championship battle is far from over and Lando Norris, who is 16 points behind McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri, knows that. Yes, many times this season Norris has been sub-par and quite frankly should not be second-best to Piastri given how the pair ended 2024, but there’s still plenty of time for him to strike back, and why not this weekend?

He’s done it before, rather recently in fact. Norris dropped 22 points behind Piastri after his Montreal disaster, but responded perfectly by winning the next two grands prix – Austria and Britain – to slash that deficit to just eight. It was exactly what Norris needed and he should use that as inspiration this weekend having just finished second to Piastri at Spa – meaning the Aussie has edged clear once more as title favourite.

Nevertheless, Spa wasn’t the end of the world for Norris, and there’s no doubt he is capable of beating Piastri for the win in Hungary. A win he could have claimed last year, had McLaren not mucked up…

How will Mercedes respond after “big meeting”? – Stuart Codling

George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

For Mercedes the season so far has been one of two halves: four podiums for George Russell in the first six races, and just one in the next seven – which admittedly was a win, in Canada.

The question is whether it can be resolved by the “big meeting” Russell said he planned to have with the engineering bigwigs mid-week. Is George the perfect driver for F1’s modern corporate era? He sold himself into a race seat via a PowerPoint presentation, and here he is hoping to solve Mercedes’ downward spiral via a meeting.

What makes finding a solution more challenging is that this problem is depressingly familiar. Last year Mercedes produced a middling car which got worse after the summer break as various upgrades failed to achieve the desired result, and the team ended up reverting to a previous floor spec in Baku (amongst other rollbacks).

Now the question seems to be whether the new rear suspension, first trialled at Imola, is the source of the malaise – or the team’s response to the new front-wing deflection tests imposed from Spain onwards. Mercedes’s development strategy for the remainder of the season was aligned around the new wing introduced there.

“Obviously, we had the change of the front wing in Barcelona,” said Russell in Spa. “We then went in a slightly different direction afterwards to sort of tackle the issue of the change of front wing.

“And clearly, since that point, we’ve taken a big step backwards. So, it could be as simple as just reverting back to something that we had earlier in the season. Of course, you can’t do that with the front wing, but in terms of the rest of the set-up. But I don’t know, it seems quite strange how we’ve gone so far backwards.”

Besides being an awful tautology, “reverting back” to a previous spec would be further evidence that the team’s aerodynamic research ‘tools’ aren’t yet fully optimised. That’s something that definitely needs to change, even if George accidentally leaves himself on mute in the meeting…

Could upgrades finally close up the pack? – Owen Bellwood

Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls Team, Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls Team, Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing Team

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

Teams up and down the grid are rolling out mid-season updates just before F1 breaks for its annual summer recess, but this year things are a little different. This year, when F1 returns in Zandvoort teams will be fully focused on the revolutionary new rules set to sweep the series in 2026, so if they hope of improving their fortunes this season, time and resources are running out. 

As a result, teams have raced to bring new parts to the track, with many debuting updated components in Belgium last weekend and the upcoming race in Hungary. The rain that fell on Spa somewhat muddied the waters on the updates, but the back-to-back race could paint a clearer picture of where teams stack up. 

McLaren’s new low-downforce wing might not be much use this weekend, but the team is still the one to beat, and Ferrari’s suspension update has done little to close the gap so far. Mercedes also isn’t moving forwards anymore, while new aerodynamic parts at Red Bull show that it hasn’t totally given up on a 2025 recovery just yet. Further down the pecking order, new parts at Aston Martin and Racing Bulls promise to spice up the midfield – with four teams now separated by just eight points.

If these upgrades can bring a boost in performance, teams could turn around their seasons. But, if not, others may throw in the towel and give up all hope of a strong result in 2025.

Verstappen looks certain to stay at Red Bull for 2026, but convincing him to remain long-term starts now – Haydn Cobb

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Marcel van Dorst / EYE4images / NurPhoto via Getty Images

Max Verstappen, both contractually and vocally, is strongly indicated to stay at Red Bull for 2026. The Dutch diver will remain in the top three in the drivers’ championship by the summer break to fulfil a contact clause that kicks in, while Mercedes boss Toto Wolff made it his intention to retain both George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

While nothing is ever fully certain in an F1 silly season, all tips point to the four-time F1 world champion entering the new era of grand prix racing at the Milton Keynes-based squad, getting first-hand experience of how the team equipped with its own Ford-backed powertrains will compare against the competition. What’s more, he will also be able to assess how the competition stacks up just as the driver market opens wider, giving him a potential avenue at every team – bar McLaren.

So Red Bull, or new team boss Laurent Mekies and the rest of the squad’s management staff, can claim to have kept Verstappen for the short-term, but from the Hungarian GP onwards it is all about convincing him to stay for the long haul. Action and words must start now if Verstappen isn’t set to get itchy feet again.