Piastri out and Ferrari gets everything wrong
A technical problem occurred to Oscar Piastri’s McLaren, which was in second position at that moment, reignited emotions at the end of the Hungarian GP. The Australian McLaren driver stopped during lap 56 of 70, immediately after Antonelli had made his second pit-stop, and Race Direction deployed the Virtual Safety Car. At this point, Ferrari decided to risk a double stop for both its drivers, Hamilton and Leclerc. However, the red wall probably miscalculated: Hamilton indeed, who had moved up to second position after Piastri’s retirement, lost two positions because of this choice to fit soft tires, being overtaken by both Max Verstappen and, above all, by Antonelli himself. A crucial episode for the championship.
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Centimeters of difference
Incidentally, the head-to-head between the two was literally decided by centimeters because Hamilton, coming out of the pits, had initially placed himself ahead of the Mercedes of the World Championship leader. However, TV images highlighted how the Mercedes #12 had crossed the Safety Car line before the red car of the seven-time world champion. Antonelli was thus able to restart, at the moment of the green flag, ahead of his main rival for the title. A cunning move, but achieved with the complicity of Ferrari, which did not want to leave either of its drivers on track, relying on the advantage of soft tires over the hard ones just fitted by the Italian. A wrong move.
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Cruel penalty
But the complete disaster arrived a few minutes later: Hamilton, during this ‘additional’ stop, also committed a ‘speeding’ infraction in the pit-lane, not respecting the speed limits: the stewards thus handed him a five-second penalty. For Hamilton, this was the fourth penalty received in the last three GPs, the fifth in the last six. Ferrari’s strategic choice therefore did not pay off at all and transformed a weekend where important points should have been gained in the standings compared to Mercedes into a sensational sporting mockery.
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