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Hungary always manages to add some spice to the proceedings, and that was true again for the final Grand Prix before the summer break. The rain might have largely stayed away from qualifying and the race but a number of drivers out of position on the grid made for some tense and memorable action. Max Verstappen proved peerless, Mercedes was back on form, and Ferrari found new and innovative ways of missing out.
Valtteri Bottas (Power issues, Lap 65): 6/10
For the second week in a row, Valtteri Bottas was able to take Friday morning off in Hungary as he gave up his seat to Alfa Romeo's reserve driver Robert Kubica. To his credit he was immediately up to speed in second practice where he was tenth quickest, and despite FP3 being largely a washout for everyone he was able to follow though and make it into final round of qualifying on Saturday, commendably close to the pace of the two Alpine cars just ahead. Unfortunately pretty much everything went awry in the race itself, with Bottas losing five places on the opening lap with a very poor start. The team had already committed to a one-stop strategy with a switch from mediums to hard tyres on lap 26, but that proved to be ill-judged. Although he was back up to P8 before his pit stop, he dropped to 14th afterwards. Second stops for other drivers boosted him back to tenth but with ten laps to go he succumbed to Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel, and then shortly afterwards the Alfa's reliability issues surfaced again and he pulled over at turn 11 to become the only retiree of the race, triggering a late Virtual Safety Car as the rain started to fall. Valtteri looked more than ready to go on his summer holidays by this point.
Yuki Tsunoda (P19): 5/10
There was a brief spell earlier in the season where Yuki Tsunoda looked as though he had managed to pull it all together after a torrid rookie campaign in 2021. But after that brief spell of hope it's been one step forward, five steps back for the Japanese driver who once again is looking out of his depth, not helped by an AlphaTauri that only gets less competitive by the week. He ended Friday in the penultimate spot on the timesheets sandwiched between the two Williams drivers, and while he found more pace in qualifying (beating both Sebastian Vettel and his own team mate Pierre Gasly) it still wasn't good enough to survive the first cut at the end of Q1. He escaped largely unscathed from the first lap jostling only to get stuck between the two Aston Martins until Vettel passed him on lap 10. He was the first driver to make a scheduled pit stop on lap 13, and pitted a second time on lap 33 which dropped him to the back for what proved to be almost the whole of the rest of the race, with the AT03 exhibiting no grip whatsoever. "We need to go away and look at all the data to understand why the upgrades we have are not paying off in the way we thought they would."
