Hungarian GP: Charles Leclerc takes surprise pole position
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, McLaren’s title contestants took a sensational, surprise polar position at the Hungarian Grand Prix before Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
Leclerc is close to McLaren’s tempo until the last part of the qualifying, and Piastri is only between 0.026 seconds.
Norris, who has 16 points in the championship, was 0.015 seconds away from his teammate.
Mercedes ‘George Russell’ won the fourth before the perfect performance of two Aston Martins, Fernando Alonso and Lance Türkü locked the third place.
Leclerc’s teammate Lewis Hamilton could not go beyond the second knockout session and will start 12th.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who competed all the weekend, came to the eighth behind Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto.
Engineer Bryan Bozzi said he was in the polar position, Leclerc was incredible. “What?” Answered. “Mamma Mia.”
After leaving the car, he said: “I have no word, probably one of the best polar positions I’ve ever had because I didn’t expect it.
“I don’t understand anything in F1 today. All qualification was extremely difficult. And when I said that, it’s not an exaggeration.
He continued: “It was difficult to reach Q2 and it was difficult to reach Q3. In the quarter, the conditions changed slightly, everything became much more difficult and I knew I had to take a clean tour for the third target and ended the polar position, I certainly can’t believe it.”
Piastri said: “The wind made 180 from the second quarter to Q3, which changed the circuit. It is hard to judge under these conditions. I was a little surprised to go faster than that.
“Charles was fast all the weekend, and this morning (in the last practice) was closer than we expected. I didn’t expect Ferrari to be the second this weekend, but he did a good job.”
Norris added: “Charles did a good job in this last round, probably took some more risks in conditions, the wind changed a lot and punished us. We thought we were doing a good job in the tours, but we were just slow.”
