Talking points ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix
Thursday, 20 July 2023
Can Red Bull break one of the sport's longest-standing records? Are McLaren now the second-fastest team? Oh, and there's two Aussies on the F1® grid for the first time since 2013 …
Red Bull Racing heads to Budapest for this weekend's Formula 1® Hungarian Grand Prix (July 21-23) on the cusp of history, the dominant force of the past two seasons on track to take the sport to a frontier few thought possible by chasing a 12th straight victory.
McLaren's 11 consecutive wins shared between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost 35 years ago is one of the sport's most enduring statistics, but with reigning world champion Max Verstappen arriving in Hungary as the defending race-winner and on a personal-best run of six straight victories, you'd be a brave person to bet against the team adding another accolade to a season that hasn't been short on them.
Elsewhere, all Australian eyes will be on Oscar Piastri to see what the rookie can do for an encore after finishing a stunning fourth last time out for McLaren … oh, and there's another Aussie on the grid you may have heard of …
Here's a trio of talking points we're watching in Hungary this weekend.
The Ricciardo return
Forget talking points we're watching, this is the one everyone has eyes on – how Daniel Ricciardo gets on in his first race weekend for Scuderia AlphaTauri, after the ever-smiling Australian was sent – 'on loan', to use the carefully-worded phrasing – from his third driver role at Red Bull Racing to the team's sister squad for the remainder of the year.
That Nyck De Vries was given his marching orders after just 10 races of his first full season may seem harsh on the surface, but there was a degree of inevitability about the Dutch driver's departure for at least half of that brief tenure, with Ricciardo parachuted in for reasons that are as multiple as they are debatable, and ones that raise plenty of questions.
Are the final 12 races of 2023 an audition for a full-time Ricciardo/AlphaTauri arrangement next year? Are Red Bull using its second team and its third driver as a reminder to Sergio Perez that it has a viable option to replace him if the Mexican's form slide – he's not qualified inside the top 10 for the past five races, all of which teammate Verstappen has won – continues? Is Ricciardo on a hiding to nothing in an AT04 car that has AlphaTauri sitting dead last in the constructors' standings, and hasn't managed a top-10 finish since Azerbaijan, six races ago?
What constitutes longer-term success for Ricciardo in the return to the team he competed for back in 2012 (when it was called Scuderia Toro Rosso) will crystallise between now and the Abu Dhabi season finale; in Hungary, having a clean weekend with comparable pace to teammate Yuki Tsunoda and knocking his race rust off would constitute a job well done.
Red Bull's shot at immortality
No matter whether you like your F1® to chop and change race-by-race or enjoy one team raising the bar, there's no denying Red Bull's impressive suite of numbers this season, its winning streak starting when Verstappen took last year's season finale in Abu Dhabi.
Of the maximum 470 points available across 10 races (plus Sprints in Azerbaijan and Austria), Red Bull has 411; that's 87 per cent, even with Perez largely an afterthought since he finished second in Miami.
With McLaren's streak at stake, it might take something dramatic – as it did 35 years ago – for Red Bull to slip up. At the 1988 Italian Grand Prix – round 12 of that season after McLaren had won the first 11 races – Prost retired with an engine failure and Senna was inexplicably taken out while trying to lap the Williams of Jean-Louis Schlesser.
Remarkably, Ferrari finished 1-2 at home with Gerhard Berger beating Michele Alboreto – and after team patriarch Enzo Ferrari had passed away just three weeks earlier. It was the only race McLaren didn't win all season …
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em …
McLaren's 30-point haul at the British Grand Prix, with Lando Norris leading the race for four laps and finishing second allied to Piastri's career-best fourth – saw the team score more points in one race than it had in the first nine this season, and came one Grand Prix after Norris introduced a new-spec MCL60 in Austria.
With a raft of visible aerodynamic changes prompting a massive turnaround in fortunes, Lewis Hamilton commented at Silverstone that the rebooted McLaren was visually a lot like the sport's current benchmark car, the Mercedes driver saying "if you just put it alongside a Red Bull, it looks very similar down the sides".
There's no question the MCL60 now looks – at a glance anyway – like a papaya RB19, but team principal Andrea Stella bristled at suggestions the McLaren is a straight copy of the Red Bull, saying "every team takes inspiration from any other team" at the British GP.
You can bet the other eight teams will be watching McLaren's prowess at the Hungaroring – a very different circuit to the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone – while simultaneously working out if imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery with their own 2023 machines.
The Formula 1® Hungarian Grand Prix 2023 will be available to watch live on Foxtel and Kayo. See our What time does the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix start in Australia article for timings.
