{"id":823354,"date":"2026-07-24T15:51:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/823354\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T15:51:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T15:51:18","slug":"lewis-hamilton-looks-for-a-chance-to-pressure-antonelli-as-f1-title-race-comes-to-hungary-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/823354\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis Hamilton looks for a chance to pressure Antonelli as F1 title race comes to Hungary"},"content":{"rendered":"

It certainly seemed that way in Friday\u2019s first practice session as Hamilton\u2019s Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc went fastest by nearly half a second from Max Verstappen of Red Bull, with Hamilton a close third. <\/p>\n

\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

George Russell was fifth-fastest for Mercedes while Antonelli had to sit out the session as the team worked toward its quota of practice sessions for non-regular drivers. Reserve Fred Vesti was seventh. <\/p>\n

Struggling Aston Martin made some progress with an upgraded car as Fernando Alonso<\/a> placed 13th but a suspension failure sent teammate Lance Stroll spinning wildly and caused a red flag.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the last race before F1\u2019s annual mid-season break, and the next race won\u2019t be until the Dutch Grand Prix on Aug. 23.<\/p>\n

One Mercedes driver leads, the other is under pressure<\/p>\n

\u201cStill a lot of work to do, still a mountain to climb in the second half of the season, but I\u2019m more focused than ever and really believe that we can fight,\u201d Hamilton said.<\/p>\n

After the last race ended with celebrations for one Mercedes star and rancor from the other, this week in Hungary is a test of whether Formula 1\u2019s top team can stay united.<\/p>\n

Antonelli almost doubled his lead to 45 points over Hamilton, and 50 over teammate George Russell, with a win in Belgium<\/a> last week after Hamilton sent Russell spinning off the track on the opening lap.<\/p>\n

Russell vented his frustration in an expletive-filled radio message asking Mercedes why he\u2019d suddenly lost speed and dropped behind Hamilton, forcing him into a risky overtake. <\/p>\n

Russell has indicated that speed loss was down to a \u201csoftware bug\u201d that the team now believes it has fixed.<\/p>\n

Hungary will have fewer software quirks<\/p>\n

After one race where mysterious software issues<\/a> played an outsize role, expect Hungary to be a more traditional race, though maybe not an exciting one.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a slow, winding layout with plenty of places where the cars can recover electrical energy under braking.<\/p>\n

Belgium was the opposite, with long straights which left cars running out of charge and amplified the slightest differences in how and when electrical energy kicks in. <\/p>\n

Drivers don\u2019t directly control how much electrical power they use and Belgium highlighted just how much they\u2019re at the mercy of the algorithms controlling how the energy is deployed at various points around the circuit.<\/p>\n

Asked if he sometimes felt like a passenger, McLaren\u2019s Oscar Piastri said: \u201cSometimes, yes. Again, at a track like Spa or a track like Silverstone, it\u2019s going to be worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cHere, I really don\u2019t expect there to be many problems at all with that kind of thing, because the straights are so much shorter, so even if there are differences, they should be a lot less. But the principle of driving a race car that loses effectively half of its power before the end of the straight is hard to get your head around sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Budapest has traditionally hosted processional races with few obvious places to overtake. Sunday\u2019s race will be a test of whether the 2026-specification cars and their battery-boosted overtaking can bring an often-dull race to life.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/a><\/p>\n

James Ellingworth, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It certainly seemed that way in Friday\u2019s first practice session as Hamilton\u2019s Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc went fastest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-823354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}