Mercedes Surges as Red Bull Stumbles in Hungary
Mercedes showed they’re back in business with an impressive third-place finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix, while Red Bull Racing couldn’t figure out how to set up their car properly. George Russell grabbed the final podium spot as Max Verstappen limped home in ninth.
The gap between Verstappen and Russell in the drivers’ championship has now shrunk to just fifteen points.
How much longer will Max stay ahead?
## Red Bull’s Headaches Continue
Red Bull insists their problems in Hungary were just a one-off, but they still can’t explain why their car was nearly undrivable—even for a talent like Verstappen.
This isn’t new. Throughout the season, Red Bull has struggled to find setups that preserve tire life and maintain good race pace.
With no more updates planned this year, Red Bull might face more difficult weekends ahead. Mercedes had similar issues earlier but seems to have fixed them by changing their rear suspension. Their podium in Budapest suggests the worst is behind them.
Mercedes now has their sights set on taking second place in the constructors’ championship.
## Development Freeze for Both Teams
Like Red Bull, Mercedes won’t be bringing any more major upgrades this season.
“It would be surprising to see anyone bringing big upgrades from this point onwards,” explains Bradley Lord, Mercedes team representative, to GPblog and other media.
“It kind of slightly depends on the semantics of big, whether that means lots of items on the list of declarations or whether it means lap time and things like that.”
But that doesn’t mean the team is standing still.
“We often see that actually where the development items dry up you can still make a lot of progress in your understanding and learning about the car even with a relatively static configuration performance-wise. So we’ll be aiming to do that and just race as hard as we can for the second part of the season.”
Ferrari remains firmly in the mix with Mercedes as the season progresses.
## ‘Second Place is Within Reach’
Lord has a clear warning for Verstappen, Red Bull, and Ferrari: “We’re in a close fight with two other teams for ultimately P2 in the championship and we’ll be giving it everything we’ve got to end up there at the end of the year.”
He believes second place is absolutely realistic.
“For the majority of the season we’ve already occupied that spot. There’s no reason to think we can’t be absolutely taking that fight to Ferrari and to Red Bull for the rest of the year.”
