Hungarian GP

Ferrari don't seem to just shoot themselves in the foot, they take full bore shotgun and give their shoes both barrels! I can't imagine that if you want to bet on Max being champion you'll find a bookie willing to take your bet. He's doing what Lewis did during his earlier Merc years and winning the races he's not supposed to be able to which is the sign of a dominant champion who's up to his eyeballs in confidence and has a team behind him who can spot where all the tactical opportunities lie and allow him to make the most of them.

For Ferrari this is a season of lost opportunity. They've clearly got the fastest car and two talented drivers but when they're reliable they are tactically naive and Charles's crash at Paul Ricard was a sign that he doesn't have the confidence in the car or the team. Their decision to react to Max with an early pit and be fooled into putting the hard tyre on will be seen as one of the seasons worst decisions and further erode his trust in those behind the scenes to make the right calls.

It was a strange race. Those towards the front were too obsessed by each other, reacting to what each other were doing. George Russell is a case in point. He made a fantastic restart over the VSC, but it was evident that the Mercedes pace whilst improved, it isn’t quite good enough yet to challenge for wins – he reacted straightaway to Sainz’s pitstop. The slow pitstop by Ferrari for Sainz effectively cancelled out any potential undercut. They had pitted too early, so whilst it looked like they were going faster on new tyres, Sainz got no benefit from pitting early, but all the pain from driving around on a set of tyres for too long, which means that the second pitstop had to be earlier, and the consequence of that was being passed by someone that he didn’t see for 60-odd laps – Lewis Hamilton. Those who weren’t so reactive gained well.

Ferrari in my view has had the fastest car, but as a team hasn’t been able to execute a campaign to win a championship. Last year between Red Bull and Mercedes, perhaps it was underappreciated how good both teams were, reacting so quickly to each other and mostly making the right strategy calls. Even today, a wounded Mercedes team has still been a very effective one, getting points from others’ issues and maximising what they can get.