Mercedes and McLaren predicted to CHALLENGE Red Bull for race win

The Hungarian GP qualifying was by far the closest of the year so far, with the top three separated by less than a tenth of a second. On a circuit with so many low-speed corners, such small margins just show how tough the competition is out there and the level at which the drivers are operating.

Interestingly, there were three teams in the mix for qualifying; Red Bull, Mercedes and the resurgent McLaren.

Over the last few races we have seen the Red Bull challenged in qualifying, but teams have not been able to match them in race pace. The data, however, shows that this might change in Hungary.

Race Pace Analysis

Due to the new qualifying format and unexpected rain in FP1, teams this weekend have run different run plans. In the analysis below, we have picked up the meaningful long runs across different sessions to try and understand the race pace using the medium tyres.

Red Bull and Ferrari

From the data collected from long runs in FP3, we can see that Red Bull are obviously the benchmark in terms of race pace with an average of 83.7sec/lap and a minimum of 83.2sec/lap. The Ferrari, however was very hard on its tyres and about 0.8 sec off the pace – not looking so good this weekend. This is very concerning, as Ferrari seemed to be going backwards for the last two races.

McLaren, Mercedes and Aston Martin

The data for these three teams comes from FP2. They are comparable though, albeit with a pinch of salt. McLaren have a similar race pace to Red Bull, with an average of 83.7sec/lap and the minimums going all the way down to 83.0sec/lap.

Although the tyre degradation on the McLaren looks slightly worse, we can expect them to give Red Bull a run for their money.

Mercedes is an unknown, although their race pace looked comparatively bad on Hamilton’s car in FP2. They seemed to have made changes overnight for FP3 and qualifying which brought their car alive, so I’m expecting Mercedes to take a step in race pace which should put Hamilton in a good position to defend from a charging Verstappen.

Aston Martin’s race pace also looks competitive, and the mighty fox Fernando Alonso will definitely make use of every opportunity available in the race.

Predictions

RedBull ~ Mercedes ~ Mclaren > Aston > Ferrari.

Strategy

In FP3, the long runs showed that, with a track temperature of around 50°C (which is what we can also expect for the race) the soft does not seem to be the ideal choice of tyre.

At the same time, with higher temperatures compared to Saturday and the normal track evolution – always very significant at the Hungaroring – the balance should swing more in favour of the two harder compounds, the mediums and the hard.

Strategy 1

With that in mind, the most likely strategy is for two stops, starting on the medium and running two further stints on the hard.

Strategy 2

A single stop (hard-medium) is possible but it’s very much on the limit, both in terms of performance drop-off and tread life. Add these factors to the way the grid order looks and it should be a spectacular race.

Shubham Sangodkar is a former F1 Aerodynamicist with a Masters in Racing Car Design specialising in F1 Aerodynamics and F1 Data Analysis. He also posts aerodynamics content on his YouTube channel, which can be found here.

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