July 24 ------ Max Verstappen led the Red Bull team to break the record of most consecutive wins as he once again outpaced the pack in the Hungarian Grand Prix. This was Red Bull’s 12th win in a row, the longest streak in history previously held by McLaren in 1988. This was also Verstappen’s 7th straight win in 2023, and 44th overall in his F1 career. Verstappen also tallied the widest lead gap of 33.731 seconds, breaking that of Lewis Hamilton’s in the Russian GP in 2021.
This, after an exciting qualifying round fanned the hopes for 7-time world champion Hamilton to once again bag a race victory after securing a front row start. However, frustration came early for Hamilton when he lost his lead, his 104th in his F1 career, and went down 2 places behind a raging Verstappen and the McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in Turn 1 of the opening lap. Norris’ consistent pace over the weekend ultimately bagged him his second consecutive P2 finish, a position higher than his qualification. His teammate Piastri meanwhile fell one position and placed 5th in the grid.
Completing the podium was Perez at P3 who jumped from P9. Hamilton settled for P4 after 70 laps through the Hungaroring track. Meanwhile, returning driver Daniel Ricciardo failed to give AlphaTauri championship points as he settled for P13. This was his first race after replacing Nyck De Vries. Under pressure, Ricciardo has 11 more races left this year to outdo De Vries’ underwhelming best finish of P12 from the first half of the 2023 calendar which got him axed out by the team.
Round 11 widened the gap for Verstappen in the championship leaderboard with 281 points, 110 points ahead of Perez with 171. Third in the running is Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso with 139, and sitting in fourth and fifth were Mercedes’ Hamilton and George Russell with 133 and 90, respectively. The drivers will next battle in Belgium on July 28-30.
Source: news.abs-cbn.com
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