Hamilton looks for a chance to pressure Antonelli as F1 title race comes to Hungary

Lewis Hamilton has a chance to pile pressure on Kimi Antonelli and Mercedes as the Formula 1 title race heads to Hungary, and there were promising signs Friday as Ferrari seemed to have the pace in practice.

Hamilton has won the Hungarian Grand Prix eight times, making it his most successful event besides his home British Grand Prix. It’s a track where cornering ability, not raw power, tends to make the difference, which could suit his Ferrari.

“I think we’ve got a car that can compete. Mercedes is still the car to beat, and they won’t be easy to beat this weekend, but I do think we’ve made subtle progress,” Hamilton said this week. “Hopefully we can be fighting with them this weekend.”

Ferrari leads the way in practice

It certainly seemed that way as Ferrari topped Friday’s two practice sessions.

Hamilton set the fastest time of the day as he beat Leclerc by 0.148 of a second in the second session, with Lando Norris a distant third for McLaren, .499 away. George Russell was the best Mercedes in fifth and Antonelli only 13th in a session interrupted by a red flag when Franco Colapinto spun into a barrier.

In the first session, Leclerc went fastest by nearly half a second from Max Verstappen of Red Bull, with Hamilton a close third. Russell was fifth fastest in that session, too, while Antonelli sat out as the team worked toward its quota of practice sessions for non-regular drivers. Reserve Fred Vesti was seventh.

Struggling Aston Martin made some progress with an upgraded car as Fernando Alonso placed 13th in the first session but a suspension failure sent teammate Lance Stroll spinning wildly. The damage ruled Stroll out of the second session.

It’s the last race before F1’s annual midseason break, and the next race won’t be until the Dutch Grand Prix on Aug. 23.

One Mercedes driver leads, the other under pressure

“Still a lot of work to do, still a mountain to climb in the second half of the season, but I’m more focused than ever and really believe that we can fight,” Hamilton said.

After the last race ended with celebrations for one Mercedes star and rancor from the other, this week in Hungary is a test of whether F1’s top team can stay united.

Antonelli almost doubled his lead to 45 points over Hamilton, and 50 over teammate George Russell, with a win in Belgium last week after Hamilton sent Russell spinning off the track on the opening lap.

Russell vented his frustration in an expletive-filled radio message asking Mercedes why he’d suddenly lost speed and dropped behind Hamilton, forcing him into a risky overtake.

Mercedes deputy technical director Simone Resta said Friday it was down to “a bug in our software” and the team found the problem. “We think we’ve finally understood it and nailed it coming into Budapest,” he said.

Hungary will have fewer software quirks

After one race where mysterious software issues played an outsize role, expect Hungary to be a more traditional race, though maybe not an exciting one.

It’s a slow, winding layout with plenty of places where the cars can recover electrical energy under braking.

Belgium was the opposite, with long straights which left cars running out of charge and amplified the slightest differences in how and when electrical energy kicks in.

Drivers don’t directly control how much electrical power they use and Belgium highlighted just how much they’re at the mercy of the algorithms controlling how the energy is deployed at various points around the circuit.

Asked if he sometimes felt like a passenger, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri said: “Sometimes, yes. Again, at a track like Spa or a track like Silverstone, it’s going to be worse.”

He added: “Here, I really don’t expect there to be many problems at all with that kind of thing, because the straights are so much shorter, so even if there are differences they should be a lot less. But the principle of driving a race car that loses effectively half of its power before the end of the straight is hard to get your head around sometimes.”

Budapest has traditionally hosted processional races with few obvious places to overtake. Sunday’s race will be a test of whether the 2026-specification cars and their battery-boosted overtaking can bring an often-dull race to life.

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

James Ellingworth, The Associated Press