Hamilton’s victory triggered an unexpected piece of information that heats up the fight between the brands

On July 19, in Budapest, the Formula 1 will resume a championship that once again excited fans after seeing four different winners in the last seven dates which brought the number to six drivers with at least one victory in 12 races. A sweet appetizer after a 2023 dominated at the mercy of three-time champion Max Verstappen, who also leads this World Cup but with less distance over his competitors.

Carlos Sainz He was the first to register among the winners. After a crushing start for the Dutchman in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and just two weeks after having surgery for appendicitis, the Spaniard managed to win in Australia with the Ferrari from which he had to say goodbye early in February, when the Scuderia announced to Lewis Hamilton as Charles Leclerc’s new partner from 2025.

Yes ok Mad Max He signed up again for the Asian races (the Japanese and Chinese GPs), Lando Norris y McLaren They broke the championship when they won at the Miami circuit built around the Hard Rock Stadium where this Sunday the Argentine National Team will seek to win his second America Cup to the thread.

It is true that on the return to Europe Verstappen won in Emilia Romagna, but the extremely boring Monaco Grand Prix It was not like that for the fans of Ferrari who saw there triumph Charles Leclerc for the first time in his land.

And, after the victories of the current three-time champion in Canada and Spain, it was Mercedes the one who showed that he also had material to get into the discussion when he won in Austria, where George Russell took advantage of the touch between friends Max and Lando and inherited the lead, and Great Britain, where Hamilton scored with his historic ninth victory at Silverstone.

The exciting data is reflected in the statistics: Since 2021 there have not been six different winners in Formula 1 -although that time it was throughout the 22 dates of the championship-, while You have to go back to 2012 to find a greater number of winning drivers: Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Vettel, Pastor Maldonado, Mark Webber, Lewis Hamilton y Kimi Raikkonen.

12 years ago, in addition to eight different winners, six brands took home the wins: McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, Williams y Lotus.

This year, however, the race seems to be closed in the powerful Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes. Precisely, in the constructors’ championship, the Austrian team has 373 points, with 71 and 78 advantages respectively over the Italians and the English. The German team led by Toto Wolff appears with 221 thanks to its recent successes.

“The form is changing a little. Mercedes was strong here, McLaren was strong last week, we won the week before in Barcelona,” he analyzed. Christian Horner, the Red Bull boss, after Sunday’s race. “If you come from Austria, where we qualified four tenths ahead of everyone else, at Silverstone we would have been in the fight for pole. At the end of the race, Max was chasing Lewis (Hamilton) and went from being 10 seconds to a second and a little. I think that, from this triplet, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Max scored the most points“he stressed.

Although he has not had the fastest car and has only won three of the last seven races – last year he had won all of them from Miami to Great Britain -, Among the drivers Verstappen was the one who added the most in the last three weeks: He accumulated 51 points compared to Oscar Piastri’s 43, Russell’s 42, and Hamilton and Norris’ 40.

When the current season began, no one was betting on a winner other than the Dutchman and his team, Red Bull. And although it is most likely that the driver will reach his fourth title in a row and beat the Frenchman Alain Prost and to German Sebastian Vettelit is not so much that the Austrian team equals the legendary Lotus of the 60s and 70s with a seventh constructors’ championship.

What happened? The chief engineer of the Austrian team, the British Paul Monaghanconsidered that “inevitably, when the grill is tightened there are small marginal details “I think there are things we have in the pipeline and as long as we are at the top of the curve, there are still things to improve,” he added.

Horner, meanwhile, admitted: “It’s no secret that we have less development time than everyone else and that we are at the top of the curve, so we find ourselves with decreasing performance“.

The one who was most publicly hurt was Verstappen. “We could say: ‘Yes it’s normal’. I do not think that’s normal. We have to continue working hard. If we think this is normal, people will overtake us. Every day I work with the engineers and I also try to push for the updates to arrive sooner,” he highlighted.

Was Zak Brownthe team leader and CEO of McLaren, the strongest contender for the title, who summarized what seems to have happened at this stage of the World Cup. “I think they got to a kind of terminal velocity faster than the rest of us,” he said. “There comes a time when returns diminish to the point where you can continue developing a car. Their credit is that they arrived first and now we have all caught up, or almost“.

While the papaya-colored car seemed faster one lap in Barcelona and the same was true for the Silver Arrows in Silverstone, it was the Red Bull Ring circuit where Verstappen demonstrated his potential with the Sprint Race victory and his crushing pole position. in the classification.

Red Bull’s Achilles heel to be just one title away from Mercedes, for now, is Sergio Perez. Checo, who renewed his contract until the end of 2026 although there is already talk of alleged exit clauses, gave “just” 118 points to Red Bull and was relegated with his last performances to sixth place in the drivers’ championship.

Although he started the year with consecutive podiums (second in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia) and rose again in Japan (2nd) and China (3rd), the Mexican has not been among the best since April 21, accumulating two abandonments (Monaco and Canada) and did not add to the last Sunday when finishing 17th -and two laps behind his teammate- in Great Britain.