The fear of winning – or of not being able to do so – is a terrible thing, because it is independent of the performance of the car or that of the rivals, in the sense that it is a personal matter, a struggle with the demons that each one has inside himself. And at stake is not only the first place but also one’s reputation. Lando Norris, the man on pole in Hungary, knows he will have to win: he has no alternatives with a McLaren that took over the front row (it hasn’t happened for 12 years) demonstrating that, at this moment, it has the best single-seater evercapable of being a protagonist everywhere. However, doubts concern Lando’s mental strength, which is Verstappen’s strong point.the terrible opponent who starts third. A defeat through one’s own fault (and it wouldn’t be the first) would push Norris into a tunnel of doubts partially putting his image at stake within the team and F1 in general. Then there is the issue regarding McLaren, a team of lineage but very young in its current structure, therefore more subject to errors in growth, led however with a sure hand by an ex-Ferrari driver, the Umbrian engineer Andrea Stella, who perhaps in Maranello has not been fully understood given what he is doing elsewhere, with much less resources than Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
The most curious thing is that Norris still believes he is in contention for the drivers’ championship, even if 84 points to recover from Verstappen is the Everest. Oscar Piastri, who dreams of overtaking Lando in the first corners, more modestly says he aims to give McLaren the constructors’ championship. However, the real scarecrow of the two, in Budapest, is Verstappenready to overtake the two immediately at the start. We’ll see. Unfortunately Perez had yet another accident. And now he’s trembling even though there’s no one on the market, ready to use, who offers serious guarantees.
Paradoxically, from one race to another Mercedes seems to have disappeared, with Hamilton unable to go beyond 5th place due to the limitations of the car and Russell even 17th, while Ferrari is still there, fourth with Sainz but detached by a good 4 tenthswhich in this F1 are enormous. The Spaniard was the point of reference for the “red” while Leclerc (sixth) certainly suffered the time lost on Friday with the accident: generous but sometimes excessive. And he is also categorical in his judgment: “The performance is not there”. That is, the new fund has not given much but the verification on the distance of the grand prix remains open. In reality, Everyone expected something completely different from Ferrari, on a track lacking the fast corners of Silverstoneindigestible to SF 24. Suffering upon suffering: when will a hint of a smile return?
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