Tag Archives: McLaren

The Hungarian GP had a thrilling conclusion as Oscar Piastri failed to dislodge leader and McLaren team mate Lando Norris, but it could have been even more intriguing had Charles Leclerc still been in contention.

We’ll never know if one or both McLaren drivers would have passed him without a fight had he not been slowed by a still mysterious issue in the last stint of the race that ultimately saw him drop to fourth, behind George Russell.

The Ferrari driver’s frustration was clear on the radio as he appeared to blame the team for the car becoming undriveable, apparently because of what he thought was an “aggressive” wing adjustment at the stop that he didn’t request.

Between getting out of the car and meeting the media he learned that wasn’t the case, and that an unidentified issue had been the cause.

As we know F1 cars can be incredibly sensitive to aero damage – in Hungary Oliver Bearman was forced to stop after he experienced similar symptoms to Leclerc, and afterwards the Haas driver had no explanation as to how any such damage had occurred.

After retrieving Leclerc’s from parc ferme the Ferrari crew found nothing visibly obvious in terms of aero damage that could have been responsible, and still had no answers as of Monday morning.

By chance Ferrari is doing 2026 Pirelli testing in Hungary this week. The team has the option to run the Leclerc chassis and potentially find out if there is a problem with it (or the Hamilton chassis or the spare with race-used LEC parts), although no decision had been made on its plans at the time of writing.

In the immediate aftermath of the race Leclerc was keen to retract some of the radio chatter that hinted at an operational or set-up mistake.

“First of all, I need to take back the words I’ve said in the radio,” he said when I asked him about the radio traffic.

“Because I thought that it was coming from one thing. But then I got a lot more details since I got out the car, and it was actually an issue coming from the chassis, and nothing that we could have done differently.

“I started to feel the issue in lap 40, or something like that. And then it got worse, laps after laps after laps. And towards the end, we were two seconds off the pace, and the car was just undrivable.

“Again, as I repeat myself, but this was an issue, and it’s an outlier. It shouldn’t ever happen again. But, I mean, I’m still very disappointed. We had one opportunity this year to win a race, which I think was this weekend.

“The first stint was perfect. The first laps of the second stint were really good as well. And I think we were in pace to try and win that race. The last stint was a disaster, when I started to have that issue on the chassis.”

When I asked if a kerb or gravel could have triggered something he said: “I don’t know yet how it was caused, but we will look into it.”

He added: “I think it was quite tricky. Otherwise I probably will have known, and they will have told me. Apparently it wasn’t as obvious on data. However, now we can definitely confirm that that there was a problem.”

Leclerc confirmed that he thought a front wing adjustment at the stop was responsible for the change in the behaviour of the car, which was so bad that he knew straight away that victory was likely to slip away.

“When I started to feel the issues, I didn’t really know where that came from. I thought it was from a change we did on the front wing at the pit stop being too aggressive.

“But then, of course, it got a lot worse, and then it seemed a bit off to me, but when I first felt the very strange behaviour of the car, I was okay, if this is staying, it’s going to slip away from us.

“It wasn’t very consistent, but yeah, basically every corner, it was doing something different.”

After the race team boss Fred Vasseur had no theories about what had gone wrong.

“Honestly, the situation was quite strange,” said the Frenchman. “We were under control the first 40 laps of the race, we are very in control the first stint, a bit more difficult the second one, but it was still manageable. And last stint, was a disaster, very difficult to drive, the balance was not there.

“And honestly, we don’t know exactly what’s happened so far. It means that we have to investigate something broken on the chassis side, or whatever. But it was at one stage I thought that we will never finish the race, we can be lucky in this situation to score points of a P4.

“It’s really frustrating for us, because that I think we did the first pole position of the season. The first two stints went pretty well, and we lost completely the pace and the path of the weekend.

He continued: “The first lap of the last stint, he lost something like one second at one stage and perhaps the message that also you interpret.

“He asked us if we didn’t do a mistake on the front wing, and adjust the front wing, but [we didn’t]. And we lost completely the pace, and then perhaps a bit snowball effect, but at the end of the day that I think from 38 to 43 we lost at least eight-tenths.”

For Leclerc it turned into one of those nightmare days, and in the course of his defence against George Russell he picked up a 5-second penalty for erratic driving.

It didn’t make any difference to his safe P4, but the penalty point was probably annoying.

“I knew I was on the limit,” he conceded. “I don’t have much opinion about it. I felt like I moved before braking and then I braked, obviously angling my car towards the apex, which is normally what I do, but I can imagine George being quite vocal on the radio. It’s normally the case.

“I don’t mind, especially on a race like this. If there was a safety car at the end of the race and I would have taken a five second penalty, I probably would have been a lot more frustrated. But it wasn’t the case.”

For Leclerc the real frustration was that this was the first opportunity in 2026 for Ferrari to win a full-length race, and while there are some tracks coming in the second half of the year that historically have been good for the Maranello outift, McLaren is going to be hard to beat everywhere.

“I think they are the strongest team out there,” he said. “And even today, they were very, very fast. I think on a track like this, what gave me hope of winning is that we were starting first, and with the dirty air, it’s a struggle to get past. I think Oscar had probably a bit more place than me, but couldn’t overtake.

“So I don’t think we are going into the second half of the season thinking that we can win anywhere.

“And that’s what makes the frustration even bigger, because we knew that this was one opportunity, probably over the season, and we had to take it. But unfortunately, with this issue, we couldn’t do much.”

For Max Verstappen the Hungarian GP weekend has been something of a nightmare this far, and his car was sliding so much that at one point in qualifying he said it was like driving on ice even on his out lap.

In the end he was almost relieved to have made it into Q3 and earned P8 – albeit with a couple of Aston Martins and a Sauber ahead.

Had Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Antonelli qualified where their cars should in reality have been, Verstappen would indeed have been edged out of the top 10.

In fact over the three practice sessions he was ninth, 14^th and 12^th – not where you would usually expect him to be.

“I mean, looking at the whole weekend, I think we are happy to be in Q3 because I’ve been more outside of the top 10 than,” he said when I asked him about qualifying.

“It’s been difficult. The whole weekend no grip, front and rear, and it was the same in qualifying. So for me, it was not really a shock. I just drove to what I already feel the whole weekend.”

He admitted that the team didn’t know what the issue was: “No, clearly not, otherwise, of course, we would have changed it already. But somehow, this weekend, nothing seems to work.”

Verstappen acknowledged that RBR also had a difficult Hungary last year, although not to quite the same degree.

“I think we still qualified very close to pole, like within a few hundredths, so I think we were a lot more competitive back then. But yeah, this weekend already, from lap one, it just fell off, and we threw the car around a lot, and nothing really gave a direction.

“And that of course is the biggest problem, because normally, when you use or you change a lot on the side of it will always give you positives or negatives, and now just nothing works.

“It’s like just going around in circles, and nothing gave you any kind of idea of what to do.”

He added: “There’s not been a single lap or a single corner that I felt good. So the whole weekend so far, it’s just been sliding.”

That sliding won’t help his tyres in race conditions. Normally you would expect an out-of-position Verstappen to make progress, but it could turn into a rear guard action.

“There may be a car a few cars in front of me that I can maybe battle with a little bit. But of course, also Lewis is still a bit further down the road, which I think he shouldn’t be there, right? So he will come through a bit.”

So is this the worst weekend he can recall over the past couple of seasons?

“I mean, we have had a few Singapore disasters. So yeah, I mean, it’s just not been a good one for sure…”

Not for the first time in 2025 Lando Norris heads into a race weekend keen to make amends for disappointment at the previous event, and with an urgent need to claw back some points in his fight with Oscar Piastri.

The Belgian GP was even more frustrating in that he did the difficult bit and beat his McLaren team mate to pole, only to lose out on the first lap to a combination of driving and technical issues.

Despite his best efforts on an alternative strategy with hard tyres he had to settle for second, losing another seven points to his rival.

Once again there followed a few days of soul-searching and discussions with the team and what he could have done differently or better.

“There’s hindsight of certain things,” he said when I asked if any lessons had been learned. “Nothing which means I would have won the race. There’s also things he probably could have done better too.

“So even if I had a mega last corner or mega Turn 1, still a pretty good chance he would have passed me anyway. So sometimes you’ve just got to accept that. As much as I would like to win them all, you can’t. A tough one to take, because I did a bad job.”

Norris stressed it wasn’t just down to him not getting it right as the first guy in line on the wet track.

“I didn’t have the best run, but at the same time then we had some, not problems, some let’s say incorrect settings with the battery, which meant he had a slight advantage of battery comparing to me, which certainly didn’t help.

“But I also didn’t do the best two corners. Whether that would have made a difference or not, hard to say. With the issue he probably would have passed me, no matter what. So yeah, a tougher one to take from that perspective.

“From the strategy and pit stops, tough to say. I don’t think a double stack would have been any better. I just had a slow pit stop. It was more the slow pit stop, and it was one of my lock ups in Turn 1, which cost me over a second and a bit. You put those two things together, it’s like four seconds of race time.

“So there’s things I could have done better, and then we as team and team could have done better, and that’s what we will try and work on.”

Spa underlined just how tight the battle between the two team mates is. There’s no margin for either to put a foot wrong over the course of a race weekend.

“I think it’s probably down to the least mistakes, I would say, more than anything,” he noted. “Not necessarily who is outright the quickest, or who can simply race better or make the best overtakes.

“I have some of my strengths, he has some of his, and it’s more down to the least mistakes. Especially because of the position we’re in as a team, we have a car that is you can say one of the best cars made in F1, and we’re first or we’re second more often than more not.

“And therefore it’s just kind of more between us, more than who qualifies first and sixth. We qualify first and second more often, and you can kind of just hold on in Turn 1, and then go from there.

“There’s not been many races where positions have swapped through a race, so therefore it’s more who can then make the least mistakes from that point next onwards.”

Asked if he had to drive at 100 percent to win the World Championship, or had learned that 99.8 might be enough, he made an interesting comment.

“I try and perform at 101 percent,” he said. “Sometimes that’s amazing. Sometimes that’s, I think, as good as you can get. And that’s what I feel is the optimum of what I and what I think a driver can achieve at times, and I do believe that.

“But also times I should drive at 95 or even 90 percent and that’s still enough to be on pole or P2 sometimes. I do regret trying to be so good at beginning part of the season, and now already I sometimes just settle for a 95 percent lap. And that’s that’s still good enough.”

Norris made huge strides last season as he experienced a winning car for the first time and found himself battling with the likes of Max Verstappen, as well as Piastri.

That process has continued this year, although his struggles to come to terms with the MCL39 have had an impact.

“There’s just always different situations, different moments along the way,” he said. “I think as a driver, I still feel better than I was. Doesn’t mean I always do a better job, because the car is quite different this year.

“I’ve had my tricky moments with the car and understanding how to drive it, just because, yes, it’s a McLaren, it’s got papaya on it, but it handles pretty differently to how it’s done in previous years. So I’ve had to just adapt to that, and it’s not suited me as well.

“But it’s just tough, and I’ve got to do what I’ve had to do, and I’ve needed to do a better job to get back to being as quick as I need to be, which I feel like I’ve done, and I’ve improved on.

“So I think [I’ve shown] my ability to improve on worst moments as a proof, or ability to improve on certain struggles that you might achieve during a weekend, or over a session or practice, whatever it is.

“Other than that, I think there’s just always going to be for everyone little things along the way that’s a new experience, or you didn’t expect, that you wish you could be better on. But I think that’s just life.”

Lewis Hamilton’s rollercoaster Ferrari season continued at Spa, as he turned a disappointing first couple of days into a charging performance in the race – and overcame a few hurdles along the way.

There’s was a lot to deal with, as he had a new performance engineer in his corner, albeit someone he knows from his Mercedes days.

Meanwhile the team introduced an upgraded suspension package that had been trialled at a filming day. There was also another unspecified mechanical element that Charles Leclerc had previously tried on his car, but which Lewis had not yet run before Spa.

Throw in the fact that it was a sprint weekend and life became quite complicated, especially on Friday, with just FP1 in which to sort things out.

A frustrated P18 in sprint qualifying, Lewis was then demoted from P7 to P16 in Saturday’s Q1 session after losing his lap time to track limits, a mistake he took the blame for.

With little to lose he then joined three other drivers in dropping out of parc ferme and starting from the pitlane with added downforce for the rain expected on Sunday, taking the opportunity to add a fresh PU to his pool.

The delayed start and extra safety car laps meant that he couldn’t use the full potential of his bigger wing, but it was certainly a help in the early wet laps as he charged up from an initial 18th to 13^th.

He then made a superbly-timed call to switch to slicks on lap 11, which put him into seventh by the time those ahead had pitted.

High downforce then became something of a handicap and he spent the rest of the race behind Alex Albon.

Nevertheless it had been a good day, and he had a smile on his face after the flag.

“Obviously massively challenging being all the way back there,” he said when I asked him about his race. “But we made some changes overnight.

“So much in the build-up to this week, obviously, with the upgrade that we had. There’s basically two elements to it. One of those elements, we had it to test back in Montreal, but I didn’t end up testing it. Charles ended up testing it, and he ended up using part of it for a couple of races.

“He did a great job today, and he’s feeling more acclimatised. For me it was the first time using it, and that spin that we had [on Friday] caught me out, because we didn’t have settings.

“Also a change of engineer, so we’re both in the deep end, basically. And I think we did a really good job overnight to rectify some of those, tweak it, fine tune it. And the car was so much better today to drive. So I had a lot of fun trying to make my way through.”

Hamilton felt that the race should have got going a little earlier, a view shared by others who had added downforce for the wet but could not take full advantage.

“We obviously started the race a little bit too late, I would say. I kept shouting, like, it’s ready to go, it’s ready to go. And they kept going round and round and round.

“So I think they’re probably overreacting from the last race, where we asked them not to restart the race too early, because visibility was bad. And I think this weekend they just went a bit too much the other way, because we didn’t need a rolling start, for example.

He added: “Definitely could have done a standing start, especially at the end there, because it was almost a dry line. It was hardly any spray. So definitely could have done that.”

Lewis said that he got the change to slicks just right.

“I’m really working to try to finesse that, to get it right each time. And I think I would say that’s been an area for me that’s not always been the strongest. And in the last race I called it, it was maybe a one lap too early, and I think this today was spot on.

“I probably could have just about done it one lap earlier, but it was like pretty much right there.”

Hamilton admitted that it hadn’t been a great weekend for him in the context of various changes. However, the race turned it into a positive.

“We obviously had these upgrades,” he said. “Everyone back at the factory works so hard. And then when you come and put a performance like I had in these past two days, it’s tough, because that’s not what the team deserves.

“And as I said, it wasn’t a case of necessarily coming in and not being in the right mind through the weekend, there were a few factors that did affect particularly on the Friday. Saturday, was just me.

“But I recovered today. So got some points, we outscored Mercedes on points, which is great. Charles did a great job. Clearly, the car is improving because Charles was able to hold on to another podium.”

Regarding the change to his engineering team he said: “”It’s not easy to switch engineers within the middle of a season, but it’s someone that I’ve known for years, who was actually on my previous team with me, but not in that position.

“So we’re getting used to each other and learning, having to learn, like, super, super quick. As I said, I think the changes that we had really caught both of us out.

“But I think we did a great job overnight, and we’ll just get stronger and stronger together.”

Lewis agreed that Spa gave him something to build on.

“I think this one’s definitely one to kind of put behind me, and I definitely feel confident going forward from here as I said, having learned more about the car today, fine tuned it. I’ll set that up better for next week, be at the factory on Wednesday. So yeah, I don’t see why we won’t have better results going forward.”

The surprise package of Spa qualifying was Alex Albon, who popped up in P5 at the end of Q3.

The Williams driver had endured a frustrating sprint qualifying, with PU issues contributing to his 16^th place on the grid.

In the sprint itself he finished in the same position, and prior to main qualifying he opted to make some aero changes – and somewhat counter intuitively given the rain forecast for Sunday he actually took downforce off while others were adding it.

Of course, it’s all relative to where you start from, and he felt that he was running too much wing.

He was ninth in Q1 and then just made it through to the last session with P10 in Q2. His fifth place in Q3 came as surprise to him as much as anyone else as he headed a very closely matched group behind the top four.

“It’s always nice to be on that side of it,” he said when I asked him about the session. “Really happy. I would say we were quite draggy on the sprint race, and we decided to drop some wing out of the car just to be in line more with other people. I felt like in the sprint race, I was quick, but couldn’t do anything behind any other cars.

“So it means going into qualifying, everything feels a little bit trickier, because you’re obviously sliding around a little bit more, the tyres fall away from you more as well. We fixed the deployment, which was the biggest difference from Friday to today.”

Albon conceded that he didn’t expect the change to work so effectively.

“I would say on pure pace, I felt less competitive during qualifying than I was at any point before the before the qualifying session. So it felt tricky. I mean, I was P10 in Q2 and I didn’t feel that happy.

“I didn’t really know where I could get more positions, let’s say. And then Q3 happened, and I found a chunk of time. So I put it down to tyres, as it always is, and we found the sweet spot today on the last run.”

He added: “I didn’t feel comfortable. I felt like when we when we took off the down force, we made the car much harder to drive, and the tyres weren’t lasting the whole lap. So it was becoming harder and harder.

“You go quicker in sector one and sector two, and sector two, and then you go slower again. You never felt like you could get all the lap in one place, and then in Q3 I did. I got it all in one. So I was really happy.”

Albon wasn’t concerned about compromising his wet weather form for the race, indicating that he still has a decent level of downforce.

“We were so far on the draggy side, though, that we’re still okay. If you remember Silverstone, I think it was the Red Bulls and ourselves, we were quite low on downforce, and we paid the price when it rained on Sunday.

“So we made sure not to overdo it. But yeah, hopefully we’ll be okay. I still think as a team, we struggle a bit more in the wet compared to some other cars out there. So if it can stay dry as long as possible, that will be great.”

He remains confident about his race form, although hopes of a dry race receded on a wet Sunday morning.

“We obviously haven’t done enough laps yet to really set up the car into a perfect place. I think a lot of that will come back to us just with setup changes.

“Being a sprint-based weekend, we haven’t really been able to do much. We’ve got more downforce. I think we need to see, because it hasn’t been the easiest weekend so far just to get the laps together.

“I think our race pace is strong. It’s hard to know, because I’ve been in DRS train the whole race this morning, but my race pace was good on Friday. I think we’ll be okay.

“We just need to kind of get some clear air, and I hope maybe the cars in front clear off and I can do my race.”

Inevitably the recent management changes at the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team provided the big talking point at Spa on Thursday, and of course the man we wanted to hear from was Max Verstappen.

Many observers suspect Christian Horner was ousted at least in part as an attempt to keep the Verstappen camp onside, and to help ensure that the Dutchman remains at the team into 2026 and beyond.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

If that’s the case it was something of a roll of the dice, because any such commitment is far from set in stone, it seems, despite his long-term contract.

When quizzed on Horner’s departure Verstappen was adamant that the decision to oust Horner was made by the parent company in order “to steer the ship in a different direction” – and that just like everyone else in the team he was informed that it has happened, and was obliged to accept it and move on.

“At the end of the day management and of course the shareholders decided that they wanted a change,” he said.

“And at the end of the day, they run the team. And I’m the driver, so whatever they decide, it’s fully in their right to do what they want. And that’s basically how it happened.

“And at the same time now sitting here, you look back at those 20 years of Red Bull, I think we’ve had a lot of great, great years, great, great results. Now, naturally, of course, are also years where it’s not going that well.

“And I think the last one and a half years have not gone how we would have liked, and management decided they wanted to steer the ship in a different direction, probably.

“And then everyone else, of course, has to, anyway, agree to that and look forward. And I am looking forward.

“Of course, I had already quite a few meetings with Laurent [Mekies] as well. The last two weeks have been quite intense for him to jump in.”

Verstappen paid tribute to his former boss.

“I’m equally also excited for the team now moving forward, because that’s what we have to do,” he said. “Looking back doesn’t make sense. It’s not going to make you faster.

“But at the same time you do appreciate of course those 20 years, and especially from my side the 10-11, years, I mean, part of Red Bull. Those things will be remembered.

“And the relationship between myself and Christian, for example, that doesn’t change. Of course, he’s not here now or during a race weekend, but it’s still like a second family to me.”

Asked if he was surprised by the Horner news he said: “At the end of the day, I think in this world things like that they can happen. And when they told me, it’s not like they just said this is what we just decided and then you hang up on the phone. You have a conversation about it.

“Now, I don’t need to go into the details of what they said. But it was okay, if you guys think that is the way forward, I’m the driver, you decide, and this is how we’re going to do it.”

Verstappen downplayed the part played in recent events by any conflict between Horner and father Jos, and insisted that the change wouldn’t impact any decision on his future.

“I think people can have a difference in opinion here and then. And I actually expect that to happen, because if everyone always agrees, there is a problem, you need to have difference in opinions. And yeah, that’s now something that we work with in a different direction.

“I’m excited about it. I don’t think it will matter at all, you know, for my decision in the future. At the end the only thing that matters is that we work on the car and make it as fast as we can make it, really, and like I said, the last one and a half years have not been where we want to be.

“Now, we try and be more competitive this year, a little bit, but for sure, also with the new regulations.”

That suggestion that there is indeed a decision to be made on his future was an intriguing one, given the debate over a potential move to Mercedes.

However when I asked if he there was a chance he would not be at RBR in 2026 and there was an option to go elsewhere he was keen to downplay the idea.

“There’s also a possibility I don’t wake up tomorrow, that there is no driving at all!,” he joked. “So life is unpredictable. But in general, I’m very happy where I’m at, and I hope and that was still the target that we set out when we signed a new deal, that I would drive here until the end of my career.”

Meanwhile Verstappen stressed that it was too early to form any opinions about a different approach from Mekies.

“Time will tell. I cannot say right now within two weeks with not even action on track, that suddenly everything is different or better, but we are trying to be better, and we are trying to work on that.”

He added: “It’s been good. I like Laurent, he’s a very nice guy first of all, very clever guy. He’s been in different areas of the F1 paddock as well, and I think that can be helpful.”