Postcards from... Budapest

Hungary marked the mid-point of the season, with 11 of the 22 races on the calendar now completed (following the cancellation of Imola) so it forms a natural place to see who has made progress and who has slid down the order compared to last year.

The driver who has gained most is Fernando Alonso, scoring 110 more points than he did so far in 2022 (from 29 to 139) but in the overall scheme of things, the 73 extra points scored by championship leader Max Verstappen compared to last year are probably more significant. Charles Leclerc would probably like to turn back the clock, as he has around half the number of points he did at this time last year: 80 compared to 170. It's a similar story for his team mate Carlos Sainz, who has scored 46 fewer points (87 compared to 133) and Valtteri Bottas, who went from 46 points in his first season at Alfa Romeo at this time last year to five currently.

Aston Martin has made the biggest jump among the teams: at the halfway point in 2022 they were ninth with 18 points, compared to third with an extra 166 points this year. The second-highest climber is Red Bull, which has taken 93 points more than last year so far. Ferrari is by contrast in the red (in every sense) with a loss of 136 points compared to last year (303 versus 167). McLaren is largely unchanged, with 87 points at this time last year as opposed to 81 now – but 70 of those points came in the last three races. The final three teams in the 2023 classification – Haas, Alfa Romeo and AlphaTauri – have just 22 points between them, whereas at this time last year they had a combined total of 112.

Not a race goes by without a new record being celebrated by Red Bull or Max Verstappen. This time, it was the turn of the Anglo-Austrian team to set a new standard, with its 12th consecutive win meaning that it shattered a long-held benchmark from McLaren. From the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix right up to now, it's been the Austrian national anthem played at the end of every race, and it seems hard to imagine the sequence being broken this weekend at Spa – given that Verstappen won from 14th on the grid last year. True, there can always be surprises at the Belgian rollercoaster – but you have to be realistic as well…

For one night, Lewis Hamilton dared to dream of interrupting the domination of Red Bull and Verstappen, after an extraordinary qualifying performance in which the Englishman snatched pole by just three-thousandths of a second. It was a true achievement from Hamilton and his team, salvaging the pride of a squad that has found it hard to accept the new era of supremacy from Verstappen and Red Bull. Hamilton claimed his first pole in 33 races – the last occasion was Saudi Arabia in 2021 – and became the driver with the most pole positions for an individual race, after claiming the top spot on the grid for the ninth time in Hungary. Previously, with eight pole positions in Australia, he shared a record of eight poles in the same place with Ayrton Senna (eight at Imola) and Michael Schumacher (eight in Japan).

Unfortunately, the Mercedes driver's dream lasted for just a few hundred metres after the lights went out, when he was passed at the start not only by Verstappen alongside him, but also by the two McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Victory would probably have been too much to hope for, but Hamilton would certainly have liked to make life more difficult for his rapid Dutch rival.

If you break it, you pay for it – but at least you get to keep the remains. That's not the case for Lando Norris though, who managed to accidentally break Max Verstappen's porcelain trophy on the podium at the Hungaroring, with an estimated value of 40,000 Euros, while he was opening his celebratory bottle of Ferrari sparkling wine. Norris has form for this: he managed to drop the BRDC (British Racing Drivers Club) trophy at Silverstone in the same way, but at least it proved to be stronger than its Hungarian equivalent. It's true that Verstappen's trophy cabinet is already amply stocked but he'll still value this one: in fact the Dutchman picked up the remains carefully and took them away with him. But next time he shares a podium with Norris, he'll be sure to keep the trophy at arm's length.

It's certainly not a July to remember for Alpine, which in the three races held this month has collected just three points: all in Austria (and two of them thanks to the Sprint race). The only point on a Sunday came with Gasly's 10th place at Spielberg, but since then there have been two double DNFs: the first at Silverstone and now in Budapest. The French squad was notably unlucky in Hungary: innocent victims of the pile-up caused by Guanyou Zhou that forced them to retire almost immediately, with just one lap completed by Pierre Gasly and two by Esteban Ocon. Now all that remains is to hope that Alpine can have a normal weekend at Spa to try and make up for lost ground in the fight with McLaren for fifth place. At Spielberg, the French team led by 47 points to 29, the score now favours McLaren at 87 points to 47.