2021 Hungarian Grand Prix News

A shock winner, controversies, clashes, comebacks and chaos. The Hungarian Grand Prix really did have it all. Laura Leslie guides you through the best stats to come from a wild weekend at the Hungaroring.

Esteban Ocon avoided all the opening lap smorgasbord of debris to emerge as Formula One’s newest race winner. Ocon becomes the 111^th driver to have won an F1 race and the 14^th different French driver to do so since 1950. It was France’s 81^st win and Ocon is the 2^nd French driver to win a race in the most recent 20 races. The win was also the 1^st for Alpine as a constructor. It was also the 1^st time in 38 years that a fully French line-up of driver, car and engine has won a race – Alain Prost last did this while driving for Renault in the 1983 Austrian Grand Prix.

It was a huge day for Ocon’s team-mate Fernando Alonso too. Alonso led a race for the 1st time since the 2014 Hungarian Grand Prix a whopping 7 years and 5 days ago, meaning Alonso now holds the record for the longest gap between two races led in a career. The disqualification of 2nd placed Sebastian Vettel promoted Alonso to 4th in the final results. This is Alonso’s best result since the 2014 Singapore Grand Prix where he also finished in 4^th place.

Vettel’s 2^nd place and 18 points were taken away from him after the race after the required 1lr fuel sample couldn't be taken from his car after the race. It would have been his 2^nd podium since joining the team at the beginning of 2021. Vettel came just 1.859s away from a potential 54^th victory in F1.

Lewis Hamilton retook the drivers’ championship lead after finishing 3^rd, which becomes 2^nd following the Vettel disqualification A Mercedes driver has now led the championship going into the summer break in 7 of the last 8 years. Mercedes itself also snatched back the lead of the constructors’ championship from Red Bull. The German squad will have a 12 point lead ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix in 2 weeks’ time. This was despite Valtteri Bottas crashing himself into the 1st opening lap retirement of his career and being the catalyst for the lap 1 mayhem.

Ferrari's Carlos Sainz finished 4th on the road, but was confirmed as the final podium finisher when the Aston Martin of Vettel was thrown out of the results. This will be Sainz's 4th podium finish in F1 and means he will have failed to actually appear on the podium in 50% of all his total top 3 results so far.

The final 2 places in the top 6 were filled by the Alpha Tauri pair of Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda. This was Alpha Tauri’s 1^st ever double top 6 finish under its’ current name and the 1^st for the Faenza based team since the 2019 German Grand Prix. 6^th was Tsunoda’s career best result yet. Alpha Tauri are now the only team to have scored points in every single round of the 2021 season, its’ points scoring streak now stretching to 13 races since the tail end of the 2020 season.

It was a double points finish for Williams too, the team’s 1^st since the 2018 Italian Grand Prix. Williams go back to Grove with a haul of 10 points and the most it will have scored in a single race weekend since the 2017 Italian Grand Prix where it also picked up 10 points. Nicholas Latifi scored his 1^st ever career points and becomes the 1^st driver to score points using car number 6 since Nico Rosberg won the world title with that number by finishing 2^nd in the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. George Russell secured his 2nd points finish of his career so far and his 1st as a Williams driver. Russell becomes the 1st Brit to score points for Williams since Jenson Button finished the 2000 Malaysian Grand Prix in 5th place. 

Max Verstappen finished a race outside the top 2 for the 1^st time all year. The Dutchman is now 12 points behind Hamilton in the drivers' championship. Verstappen’s team-mate Sergio Perez suffered the 4th opening lap retirement of his career after being involved with the chaos at turn 1. Red Bull have only scored 5 points in the previous 2 races, while Mercedes have scored 61.

It was despair for Lando Norris and McLaren too. Norris failed to finish and therefore score points for the 1^st time in 2021, ending his record breaking run of 15 consecutive points finishes as a McLaren driver. Daniel Ricciardo could only finish the race outside the points in 11th, ending McLaren’s points scoring streak of 17 straight races.