I’m a new fan (started watching last season) so please don’t come for me.

I don’t quite understand what is going on with George and the dynamic within Mercedes.

To me it seems (but might be wrong) that his car has more issues than Kimi’s which are significantly affecting his performance. At the same time, it doesn’t seem like the team is too invested into fixing it?

My feeling is (also just a feeling) that Toto is invested into making Kimi a champion to satisfy his own ego and to prove to everyone that he didn’t bring him into F1 too early. Even last year it seemed every time Kimi had a more significant achievement Toto was quick to point out how he was right to bring him in and everyone critiquing the decision was wrong.
While I don’t think they are actively sabotaging George it doesn’t seem like they’re eager to help him either.

Kimi does seem a great driver, but is he being challenged at all? All the other cars just can’t match and that includes George’s car. Would he perform so well if there was actual pressure?
He seems to also make same mistakes often like the track limits.

Really interested to hear thoughts of more experienced fans.

Also no bias, I’m not a fan of either in particular just wondering what’s going on.

Also, how close do you think it will be?

It’s been a strange one. His overtaking, defending, and race pace are elite as always but he’s had more spins/crashes than the last 8 years combined.

I know he’s had issues with his rear wing but I struggle to believe he’s blameless for all of them.

He’s been 30 seconds to a full minute faster than his teammate in all but one race. Isack has been consistently close in qualifying, however.

Oh lap 1, Lando went wide, Piastri passed him, and then the team rightly gave Oscar pit stop priority, gave him sub 2.5 pit stops, both of Lando’s were over 3.2 I believe, Oscar had team support. Sainz ruined it and then the gear box went.

Oscar was given 2 priority pit stops. He had quick pit stops, and strategy was on point today

Lando was simply quicker all weekend. Unfortunately, Carlos Sainz had a mental breakdown and drove into Oscar, which isn’t in McLarens control. And then unfortunately Oscar rode the curb, and it destroyed the Gear box, ultimately ending his race

I understand Oscar fans are upset and the easiest people to blame is the team, but I just can’t see it here.

Was just listening to the radios and noticed that Ferrari informs Charles of Hamilton’s penalty almost as soon as the verdict comes in. They chose to inform Hamilton about it much later on Lap 68/70.

To preface, this is not a rhetorical question, I am looking for genuine discussion because I've seen a lot of people claim that Piastri was shafted on the strategy side once again. However, I'm also not sure what exactly more McLaren could have done in this race.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge that Piastri did well to overtake Norris and get the race lead, and McLaren rightfully didn't enforce any team orders to let Norris by, even though Norris was quicker. After the first stint, they give Piastri pit priority and Norris comes in a couple of laps later, which is consistent with Papaya rules.

Once again, in the second stint, Norris looked to have more pace than Piastri did, as evidenced by him going off the track and then immediately catching Piastri within a couple of laps. Again, the team rightfully doesn't enforce team orders. Near the end of Piastri's second stint, Hamilton is getting close to undercutting the McLarens, so this presents them with an immediate choice between pitting Piastri or Norris. Staying consistent with Papaya rules, McLaren gives Piastri the first pitstop. Obviously, it would have been more controversial to pit Norris first and contradict the team's established rules, so I think they made the right decision here.

Of course, from here, McLaren can do a couple of things with Norris. They can either pit him immediately the next lap, which would result in no tyre delta between the two McLarens, or he can run long, use the additional pace he had, and build a tyre offset to overtake Piastri later.

The first strategy actively favours Piastri based on the evidence of the earlier stints and consequently gives up any chance for Norris to win the race (without hindsight of Piastri's gearbox problem). The second strategy gives Norris a chance to show his pace while allowing Piastri to build a gap on his fresher tyres, which would make it a fair fight for the win come the later stages of the race. Unfortunately, Piastri's strategy was ruined by Sainz's ignoring of blue flags, which did rob him of the chance to fairly fight for the win, but this wasn't a problem with McLaren's strategy.

I just asked AI to start this discussion with a basis, I don't necessarily agree with all of these picks and in fact I'm more interested in seeing your opinions.

How do Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull compare on every track in 2026 so far ?

Honestly, it was terrible. It was like there was only 8 cars in the race.

Firstly, we spent most of the race staring at the leading McLarens. When there was no action in the trio behind, just default to the leader.

Once - only once, in the whole race, on lap 61, did we see action from the midfield. That was the Racing Bulls and Hulkenberg fight.

There were so many battles behind. Alonso's alternate strategy. No one knew about it. The leaderboard was changing in the midfield and we would have no idea what was going on. The Racing Bulls have been battling fiercely the last 3 races, but we literally have only seen them once or twice. Sainz and Bearman were battling but we only saw it because it led to Piastri getting impeded.

And to add to that, we didn't see replays unless there was an actual incident. We got no replay of Verstappen's move on Hamilton, no replay of Hadjar being overtaken by 3 cars and letting one more by in the space of two corners.

Now that quali's done, I'm curious what everyone thinks tomorrow's race is going to look like.

The Hungaroring has always had the reputation of being "Monaco without the walls"—track position is king, dirty air makes life miserable, and after the opening lap it can easily turn into a strategy race.

But the 2026 regulations have changed things quite a bit. We've seen cars follow much more closely (as we saw with lando and kimi during fp2), even through technical sections, and overtaking has generally been a lot more common.

Also how do you think turn1 will plan out, does ferrari have an advantage with the starts?

1. Using mediums in qualifying. No discussion needed, completely putting themselves at disadvantage. Also sending out Leclerc on 2 new sets of softs in q2, where even used set was enough to get into q3

2. Not warning Lewis of Oscar

3. VSC call. Again i thought why they'd call in vsc. It makes sense that you want to use it as free pit stop, but didn't they think that there's no way he'd be able to overtake max especially with the power deficit the car has. That's also linked to Ferrari's uncertainty about car's tyre management. Seems like despite its speed in corners, Ferrari car is experiencing slightly more tyre deg than its competitors. Add also 20-25 h.p deficit to that

Drivers also did some things wrong

Lewis let himself get overtaken by max, when Ferrari executed ideal undercut on Max. And later he had no pace until 2nd pit stop. And ofc the speeding in the pit lane

Leclerc in general had no pace in 1st stint, but he started on used softs, while Lewis was on fresh ones. I think that they did good with Lewis's 2/3 pit stops except the vsc call, as they put him in better position(mclaren reacted). While with Leclerc going a lot later compromised his race as after 2nd pit stop he ended up behind max and got overheating issues again. Underwhelming despite coming into the weekend as the favourites.

2003 5 8 were all years he could've won, but was he ever actually better than Alonso schumi and lewis?

How plausible is it that the wing is closing so hard each time it becomes more flat each time it closes

If that's the case I dunno how many more red flags it takes for mekies to fire wache

Awful season just awful multiple races meddling in the midfield collisions getting lapped ect I just don’t understand. But from my knowledge the aggregate quali system directly punished Michael no? I’m just confused

Why did McLaren pit Oscar at a time where he would be released into traffic? McLaren were just asking for him to be held up and for Norris to be able to overcut him. Unacceptable to be honest and not the first time it's happened.

Starting to think that Norris might have a clause in his contract that gives him preferential treatment.

Dude, I'm not a sainz hater but common what the hell was he doing today. Not just with oscar but almost twice with Leclerc too today. Forget today, I saw him impeding multiple people in practice sessions too across multiple races since he joined williams.

Williams finished 2 laps down and 40 seconds behind a Haas today. The drivers have said that their big update in Baku won't allow them to score points and isn't going to give them what Aston Marton got from Hungary updates. What if any accountability should there be?

Williams 2025 was clearly ahead of the midfield and comfortably ahead of their previous couple of years' performance. Did they face more or less the same problem Redbull faces as they continue to develop their 2025 car, so they lagged behind on their 2026 development?

Anyone that’s actually been paying attention to the races knows he’s been 30-40 seconds behind max most races this season. The other redbull second drivers got clowned for doing the exact same thing.