F1: Hamilton outduels Verstappen for pole in Budapest

Lewis Hamilton turned a lap of 1m16.609s to win the pole position in his #44 Mercedes for the 2023 Hungarian GP at the packed to the gills Hungaroring in Budapest.

Hamilton beat arch rival Max Verstappen by only 0.003s to take his 104th F1 pole position, a record, as the crowd cheered.  It had been 33 races since he last sat on pole.

“It’s been a crazy year and a half, I’ve lost my voice from shouting in the car,” said Hamilton! “The team have worked so hard, we’ve been pushing so hard to get this pole. I didn’t expect to be fighting for pole, that last run I gave it everything.”

“I’ve been struggling the whole weekend to find a good balance, I had a really difficult Q1, Q2 to attack the corners,” said Verstappen. “We are still second, but I think we should be ahead with the car we have, but this weekend we haven’t been on it.”

The 2nd row is all McLaren, Lando Norris pipping his teammate Oscar Piastri 1m16.694s to 1m16.905s respectively.

“I’m disappointed I guess, if you are doing within a tenth of pole, it feels like you could be on pole if you put the lap together,” said a slightly disappointed Norris.

“As a driver I’m not the happiest, I made too many mistakes.”

Guanyu Zhou rounded out the top-5 for Alfa Romeo, a sensational result for the struggling team.

Verstappen looked to have done enough to take a sixth consecutive pole with his opening flying lap of Q3. The Dutchman claimed provisional pole with a lap 1:16.612 and when the impressive Norris crossed the line 0.082s off the champion on his final lap it looked like Verstappen’s failure to improve wouldn’t be punished.

Hamilton was the last man left to cross the line, however, and when the seven-time champion crossed the line he was 0.003s clear of Verstappen and on pole. It mark’s the Briton’s ninth pole at the Hungaroring, a new single circuit record in Formula 1.

Qualifying at the Budapest circuit saw the debut of the Alternative Tire Allocation, with teams restricted to 11 sets of the tires for the weekend instead of the usual 13. It also reframed the battle for grid position, with teams required to use Hard tires in Q1, Mediums in Q2 and Soft tires for the final top-10 shootout.

In Q1 Verstappen looked to be in control when, with eight minutes left in the 18-minute session, the Dutchman jumped to P1 with a lap of 1:18.658 that featured personal bests in every sector. However, with a little over four minutes left, his Red Bull team-mate, Sergio Pérez, moved to the top of the order with a lap of 1:18.209.

He was quickly beaten by Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu who went two tenths of a second quicker and Carlos Sainz moved to P3 for Ferrari ahead of team-mate Charles Leclerc.

The track was quickly improving and it meant that in the final moments Verstappen slid to seventh place. He took a new set of tires and just after the checkered flag fell he took second place behind Zhou with a lap of 1:18.318.

At the other end of the order, the returning Daniel Ricciardo took his AlphaTauri into Q2 with a lap of 1:18.906, 0.007s ahead of Williams’ Alex Albon who was eliminated ahead of Ricciardo’s team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, Mercedes’ George Russell and last-placed Logan Sargeant in the second Williams.

At the start of the second segment, Pérez set the benchmark at 1:17.675. Verstappen found plenty more pace, however, and he took P1 almost four tenths clear of his team-mate thanks to a lap of 1:17.296. However, the championship leader’s time was swiftly deleted for a track limits infringement in Turn 5. Norris then took P1, three tenths ahead of Pérez and the McLaren driver was joined at the top by his team-mate Oscar Piastri who slotted into P2.

Verstappen returned to the garage and with a new set of Medium tires onboard the Dutchman jumped to safety, posting a lap of 1:17.547 to move from P15 to second on the timesheet. In the final moments Norris kept hold of top spot as Hamilton pushed Verstappen to P3.

There was no place in Q3, however, for Sainz, with the Spanish driver dumped to P11 by a last-gasp lap from team-mate Charles Leclerc who took P6. Also out at the end of the middle segment were 12^th-placed Ocon, followed by Ricciardo, Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and Gasly, who had his final lap deleted for a track limits transgression in Turn 4.

When the green lights went on to signal the start of the top-10 shootout, it was Verstappen who claimed bragging rights in the opening runs with the champion claiming provisional pole thanks to a a lap of 1:16.612, 0.126 ahead of Hamilton.

In the final runs, however, the Dutchman couldn’t find the pace needed to stretch ahead and a slow final sector meant he failed to improve. Norris slotted in behind him, eight hundredths of a second off the champion but last across the line was Hamilton and the Mercedes driver managed to edge to pole position ahead of Max by the tiny margin of three thousandths of a second.

With Norris third, fourth place went to the Briton’s team-mate Oscar Piastri while Zhou Guanyu scored an impressive fifth place ahead of Leclerc, Bottas and Alonso. Checo made a small gain on his final lap but in the end his time of 1:17.045 was only good enough for ninth place and row five alongside Nico Hülkenberg.

And who fancies the return of the Hamilton – Verstappen rivalry, with those two lining up alongside each other? Yes, it’s not for P1 in the drivers’ championship, but even so there will be no quarter given.

Hamilton will garner the most headlines – but there are plenty of other storylines at play. McLaren’s rise back to the front has continued, with Piastri very much getting on the pace of his teammate.

From Q1 eliminations at the start of the season to here, it’s been quite some recovery for the papaya team.

Race day is going to be a pretty tasty affair, and remember, Norris in third with a bit of a slipstream won’t let the reputation of the front two cloud his thinking one bit as he looks to grab at the very least back to back podiums.

Qualifying Results 2023 Hungarian GP