Formula 1: Double and embarrassment for McLaren in Hungary. Verstappen collapses, Hamilton and Leclerc do well

Aside from this slight bisque, it is not having embarrassed the winning drivers that is the real issue of the day. The 'worst' came from Verstappen and another chaotic handling from the race wall.

Piastri deserved his victory, all things considered, with a great start. It was a start that saw him immediately overtake his team-mate which, in turn one, took Verstappen off the track and from there started to send him off the track to the end. Max, in fact, could easily have finished third based on the potential of his car.

But at the start he wanted to overdo it and, not caring about the regulations, after an unavoidable off-track in his over-aggressive stint, he tried to be clever by overtaking Norris on the grass. So already in the first stint he had to give up the second position he had gained in an over-ambitious manner: as the regulations state, you cannot gain a position by driving off the track.

Unfortunately, in modern and less physically demanding Formula 1 than in the past, drivers have the breath to talk while driving and excellent digital radio signals, broadcast worldwide.

And Max Verstappen did not miss the controversy against the federation already for this first episode: an ugly spectacle to which the reigning champion is no stranger.

His greed and lack of elegance inherited from his father resulted in yet another figure of a spoilt child. Which, moreover, comes in the middle of a weekend where he lost both pole position and second place with a delay of only 46 thousandths from first.

In addition to his mistakes, however, Verstappen also had to 'pay' for problems with the single-seater and a poor team strategy. So Hamilton fully deserves a third place, for having been able to resist a Max who was anything but a 'champion', just as Leclerc is rewarded with a good fourth place, almost undeserved because the car showed only partial improvements but still insufficient to counter the big boys.

In any case, a lot of things happened on this Sunday that will allow this day to be remembered for a long time, even if not always in a positive way. Certainly if McLaren will be criticised for forcing Piastri's victory over Norris, who is further ahead in the standings, their justification is also a certainty, even communicated over the radio, that 'there will be many more opportunities to win'.

Add this to the fact that Lewis is back to being competitive in earnest, that Ferrari has all in all taken a step forward, and you could say that Red Bull's unconquered dominance really does seem to be over.

Not least because there will undoubtedly be resentment between Verstappen and the team, which in turn will blame him for coming across as a historically 'inadequate driver' at two moments. But not only that: with his attitude on the track and in interviews throughout the day, the worst of his character is coming out. It is slowly becoming clear to everyone that the champion in the cockpit is in fact not a champion at all on a human level: he is playing the 'bad child', capricious, dangerous, spoilt, who should be watched and moderated even by the federation.

Only a great deal of luck, more Hamilton's than his, made a second, potentially very dangerous, 'only' damage-free and consequence-free event at the end of the race.

But it could have been much worse: the seven-time champion, in fact, after resisting a couple of unsuccessful attacks, was at one point confronted by Verstappen on the inside of a bend who, due to the single-seater 'hanging' on the brakes with the wheels locked, slid until he came into contact with the right front wheel of the Mercedes which, due to the rotation of two tyres spinning in the same direction, lifted Verstappen's Red Bull from behind like in a teenage race.

A huge risk averted only by chance: it could have put both drivers out of the race and caused six-figure damages that would have affected the teams' annual budget.

The gap in the race between the two Woking cars faithfully reflects the increasingly clear mutation in the balance of power in this championship. After seeing him succumb to Russell and Hamilton in the last two races, this third consecutive loss is something of a record: a streak without Max on the top step of the podium of this kind has not been found in the record books since 2021, when the Dutchman wrested dominance from Hamilton by just 8 points. It matters little that already in the first stint Verstappen complained of brake problems: in any case the team had kept him in to try and make up something on the McLarens, so at that moment the situation was not so dramatic.

And in spite of the grip 'problems' admitted yesterday, which would justify the unusual position of chasing the orange rivals, who grew steadily over the course of the season, the lap times were sometimes even better: Max only gave way to the pace of the McLarens much further towards the finish.

So much so that even halfway through the race Red Bull, the only one capable of fighting back, proved capable of scoring some very respectable sectors. And the aggressiveness of the 'cannibal' emerged out of the anger and pride of wanting to recover at all costs at least the position on Hamilton. Who had 'robbed' him of third position because of an over-delayed bib pit call. But his excess of ego ruined everything.

It was not entirely competitive in qualifying, despite Leclerc's good fourth, however at Maranello they are trying to turn the page after the disastrous races of recent months.

Due to Russell's overly risky choices and Perez's inconsistency, Ferrari have at least mathematically returned to third-team points, although in fact the McLarens have both become uncatchable for the Reds, while the overall position of fourth for Leclerc and sixth for Sainz also come as a result of the other teams' second drivers not always up to the mark, who paid in both cases for disastrous qualifying. For the Reds, however, the new underbody brought to Hungary seems to give the hoped-for benefits at least in the medium and slow sections, but at the moment they have to keep the innovations to a minimum because with the two upgrades of the past months (introduced at Imola and Spain) the red team has already spent 50% of the allowed budget.

In the ambiguity of the celebration for the Andre Stella-led team, there is another record of the day that they will carry in their hearts. Before them there were Alonso and Hamilton, back in 2007: a front row of a grand prix in Monaco with 24 years and one month as the youngest average age for two Formula 1 drivers ahead of everyone, both in qualifying and in the race. Today, two teammates, still in McLaren, Piastri and Norris, have lowered this statistic to 23 years, 11 months and 28 days.