Charles Leclerc on the front row, but with a confession about Lewis Hamilton
Charles Leclerc will start from the front row at the Hungarian Grand Prix, inheriting the second spot on the grid from Lewis Hamilton, who was penalized for impeding Oscar Piastri during qualifying at the Hungaroring. Despite this, the Monegasque Ferrari driver refused to let it go to his head, admitting—on a track he has historically never liked throughout his career—that he struggled compared to his teammate.
““The wind changed today, and I couldn’t predict what would happen with the setup. I’d sensed it since this morning,” Leclerc explained after the engines had already been shut down on Saturday in Hungary, “and then qualifying was a bit chaotic. On my first attempt, I was a bit unlucky in the final sector; then we tried to catch up, but I never matched Lewis’s pace. I tried to get the most out of it, and all things considered, I think I succeeded.” And with Hamilton forced to start from fifth on the grid, the No. 16 driver hopes to deliver a victory for Ferrari—a feat that has occurred only twice at the Hungarian Grand Prix in the last 21 years.
Hamilton’s penalty—a three-position grid drop imposed by the FIA more than two hours after the end of the session—has therefore completely reshuffled the starting grid. Leading the pack will be Lando Norris, the reigning world champion, who secured pole position with a time of 1:17.207, edging out the two Ferraris by just 12 thousandths of a second. Behind Leclerc will be Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen, with Hamilton in fifth and George Russell in sixth—the latter coming off a difficult session that was cut short by a technical issue with his car.
It wasn’t just Hamilton, however, who had to deal with the FIA: Kimi Antonelli, the world championship leader with 204 points, was also penalized three grid positions for failing to respect a yellow flag during his flying lap. The Mercedes driver from Bologna, who had finished qualifying in fourth place, will thus start seventh. Yet the young driver was convinced he had followed the rules: “My lap could have been good enough for third place,” he told ‘Sky Sport’. “Verstappen was stopped in the last corner, so I eased off. Besides, they displayed the yellow flag just as I was entering the corner, and that distracted me. I lost a lot of time on the track—it’s a shame because the session had already been complicated enough. In fact, even if I hadn’t slowed down, I would still have been a tenth slower than Norris.”
For Leclerc, therefore, Sunday’s race presents a real opportunity, especially considering the championship standings. The Monegasque driver arrives at the Hungaroring with 126 points in the overall standings, fourth behind Antonelli, Hamilton with 159, and Russell with 154. A victory could shake things up ahead of the summer break, especially since Ferrari has brought significant technical updates to the Hungaroring: as Antonelli himself noted on the eve of the weekend, the Maranello-based team has brought an updated rear wing to the track, a sign that the team is working to close the gap to Mercedes.
Finally, the relationship with Piastri remains a hot topic surrounding Ferrari in this final stretch of the season before the summer break. Already at Thursday’s Media Day, Leclerc had taken a step back regarding the close battle with the Australian that took place in Belgium, at Spa-Francorchamps: “I partly agree with what Oscar said,” the Monegasque driver admitted. “In the end, I tried to really push myself to the limit, and in those moments, I think I went a little too far. That’s not how I want to race—it’s risky for me, too. In situations like that, you always try to close off every gap, but maybe on that occasion I went too far in doing so.” These words of reconciliation—in light of the incident where Piastri threw a punch at Hamilton during qualifying—show just how tense nerves still are in the Hungarian paddock.
