It’s a grid that looks like it could’ve come straight from last season.
Just like last year, McLaren and Ferrari were closely matched in the battle for pole and share the front row.
And just like last year, arguably the slower car got pole position.
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Charles Leclerc took pole here in 2025 despite not having set the quickest time of qualifying in a bizarre Q3 that offered no improvements in lap time.
This year it’s Lando Norris on pole despite Ferrari probably having had the equipment to do the job.
Just as it had done for Leclerc last year, clutch driving sealed the deal for Norris.
For the second season in a row, conditions peaked and then declined at the beginning of Q3. Lewis Hamilton held provisional pole after his first Q3 lap, but then the track seemed to get slower for the final laps, and all but two drivers failed to find more time.
Unfortunately for Hamilton, Norris was one of those drivers.
Norris had been just 0.101 seconds behind Hamilton when he embarked on his final lap of qualifying, and as one of the last drivers over the line, he knew there could be no reply if he could string it together.
A blistering middle sector is what made it. Strongest through that part of the track all weekend, his advantage peaked above 0.2 seconds as he hit the brakes for turn 12.
It was just enough of a buffer to survive Hamilton’s unbeatable final sector and emerge with the narrowest pole of the season, with a margin of just 0.012 seconds.
“I was confident. I knew I could do it, honestly,” he said.
It was his first pole position as the defending world champion and McLaren’s first pole of the season.
It couldn’t have come at a better time.
THERE’S LIFE STILL IN McLAREN
McLaren’s big upgrade was one of the key stories of the weekend.
The team hasn’t brought a major update to the car since May, having realised it had picked some wayward design choices that needed to be reworked.
It left the team sliding down the order in the intervening months, but this weekend’s update — with more to come at the Dutch Grand Prix after the break — corrected the course.
Indeed the result suggests it’s done more than that, even if this is only one particular circuit.
“That potential has turned into a result, which is always a very nice thing to see for the whole team and very good for the motivation and the atmosphere within the team,” Norris said. “It’s rewarding to see work going in and rewards being taken out, so I’m very pleased for all of them.”
Even so, team boss Andrea Stella described it as “somewhat surprising”.
“The new upgrades we brought to the track performed exactly as we had anticipated, and this outcome is a testament to the months of relentless effort from everyone back at the factory in developing and delivering these parts.
“While we have a lot of progress to still make, today confirms that our development direction seems the right one, and I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved.”
The only disappointment was Piastri’s relatively lowly fifth-place result almost half a second off the pace, though that was down to him being impeded by Lewis Hamilton at the start of his final Q3 attempt.
He’d been 0.364 seconds slower than Norris after the first runs, but the Australian had more to gain, having missed FP1 and having got the upgraded car only in FP3, giving him more ground to make up in less time.
Norris said that he didn’t need to make any major changes to his car after FP1, giving him a much longer run-up to qualifying with the car in inconsistent track conditions.
Had Piastri’s rate of improvement continued, he likely would have qualified third or fourth, though grid penalties for drivers ahead mean he’ll start third anyway — arguably a better place to start than second given how dirty this circuit is off the racing line.
This is by far the most competitive McLaren has looked since its previous upgrade in Miami, where Norris and Piastri finished second and third — though that was up from fourth and seventh in qualifying.
This weekend was billed as a test of whether the team could retain its slender, outside shot of defending its championship or at least taking the fight to Mercedes at the front of the field.
This is just one track, but so far the signs are good.
Verstappen spins out in Q3 | 00:20
DID FERRARI COST ITSELF POLE?
McLaren and Norris deserved pole, but it came not just contrary to expectations but also against the run of play.
“We were quickest throughout qualifying, so it definitely got away from us,” a clearly dejected Lewis Hamilton said after qualifying second.
He was doubly downcast for knowing he was under investigation for impeding Piastri at the critical moment in Q3, and the infraction that cost him a three-place grid penalty and will see him start fifth.
Leclerc will start second, which is one up on his qualifying position but puts him on the slippery side of the grid, from where making a typically good Ferrari getaway will be more difficult.
But considering the team’s form coming into qualifying and through most of the session itself, and considering Hamilton led after the first runs of Q3, it’s hard not to agree Ferrari let this one get away from it.
Part of it is down to some confusing execution from the team.
Hamilton, for example, was surprised he was sent out as the first car to set his final qualifying lap.
Typically, when the track is improving as much as it was before Q3, being last on track is most beneficial — Norris was the penultimate car to set a time.
“I don’t know why we went first, and that was a bit of a shock to me,” Hamilton said. “I definitely wouldn’t have chosen to go first, but it is what it is.”
Had he not been first in the order, he also wouldn’t have been in a position to block Piastri and incur a penalty.
The Briton also shouldered some of the blame, though.
“I had a clean out-lap, and when I started my lap, already into turn 1 I had a snap and I was already 0.15 seconds down.
“It just cascaded from there, so the last lap was the worst lap of all, and all the other laps were really good.
“We clearly had the car to be on pole today, and I just didn’t deliver. So that’s tough to swallow.”
Leclerc said simply that he couldn’t find the rhythm on Saturday after having looked so strong on Friday
“Getting into the car, the feeling wasn’t great, and then it was just a messy session overall,” he said. “I’ve been off by maybe 0.2 seconds between the two, throughout the whole qualifying, and I didn’t truly find a solution to it, so that was a bit of a shame.
“That was purely driving. I’ll look into it and try to understand.”
On a weekend Mercedes underperformed and will start sixth and seventh, Ferrari and Hamilton look like they’re missing a wide-open goal to take a big bite out of their championship deficits.
But amid the disappointment of the team’s underperformance, there are some bright spots.
Leclerc noted that Ferrari’s race pace during Friday practice was strongest in the field — notwithstanding possible gains from other teams — and the team has two cars inside the top five, which is still a strong position.
Perhaps more important, however, is that warmer Sunday conditions on this high-degradation circuit have opened up strategic options for the teams.
A two-strategy is rated as marginally quicker than the one-stop. Traditional Budapest is a tough track for overtaking, but the same is true for Barcelona, where Ferrari committed to the extra stop and had the pace to win even without the virtual safety car that guaranteed it.
Ferrari still has the pace to put up a fight and walk away with a big points swing and, with better execution, victory.
MERCEDES IN DAMAGE CONTROL AFTER SEASON-WORST RESULT
McLaren’s pole-getting performance may have been “somewhat surprising”, but Mercedes’s flop was a real shock, failing to take pole position for the first time this season.
Title leader Antonelli qualified fourth, his equal worst qualifying result of the year and teammate George Russell qualified an outright-worst seventh.
Antonelli then picked up a three-place grid penalty for insufficiently slowing for yellow flags on his final lap in Q3, demoting him to a season-low seventh and moving Russell up to an equal-worst sixth for the year.
At 0.272 seconds off the pace as the third-quickest team on the grid, whichever way you cut it, it’s Mercedes’s worst Saturday result of the year by far.
Even worse: Russell stopped on track at the end of Q3 with a cracked engine leaking water. The team has swapped his engine without penalty, but that has future grid drop written all over it in what could be another blow to the Briton’s championship campaign.
On the one hand, the Hungaroring does not play to Mercedes’s strengths, with very few straights on which it can make the most of its engine advantage, which it retained even over customer team McLaren.
On the other hand, however, is that Mercedes’s advantage has been slipping for months, with Ferrari having been in a position to pinch two of the last three victories and now McLaren challenging too.
Antonelli also noted that “we’ve seen others bring more upgrades” compared to Mercedes, which hasn’t had a major revision since Canada, instead preferring incremental improvements.
Mercedes deputy technical director Simone Resta said on Thursday the team will switch focus in the second half of the year to bringing a bigger upgrade package in a bid to match its rival teams.
“Probably, after the shutdown, we will try to focus on having something more sizeable on the car,” he said. “We are clearly focused on trying to develop the car at every event but also trying to think bigger by bringing another step to the car.”
The Hungaroring is one particular circuit towards the fringes of the spectrum of tracks on the calendar. Its patchwork tarmac has also made it a particular challenge this weekend that means the results here are unlikely to be generally representative.
But the trend is also clear. Mercedes has been caught.
For the first time this year, the team is in damage-limitation mode, and the question is how much pain its rivals can exact heading into the midseason break.
ASTON MARTIN RESHAPES THE MIDFIELD
McLaren’s big upgrade has had a material effect at the front of the field, but Aston Martin’s update was even more consequential.
After months of pain with a dismal first attempt at a 2026 car, Aston Martin brought the first tranche of a multi-part upgrade to Hungary. Having pooled all its development resources into the package, its entire season — and who knows what else — hinged on its success or failure.
You can only imagine the size of the relieved exhalation in the garage and back at the factory when Fernando Alonso did what seemed impossible only a week ago: he made Q2.
It sounds like a low bar, and it is relative to the team’s lofty preseason expectations.
But you have to consider how far off the back of the pack it was before this weekend.
In the previous three races, Aston Martin was on average +3.778 seconds off pole and 0.68 seconds behind newcomer Cadillac over a single lap.
These times are calculated by normalising every circuit to an 80-second lap time to compare different tracks accurately.
With one upgrade package, Alonso closed his gap to pole to just 2.695 seconds and moved Aston Martin up to ninth in the ranking, ahead of Williams and Cadillac, in what is by far the team’s most competitive qualifying performance of the year.
Aston Martin’s five smallest gaps to the front
1. Hungary: +2.695 seconds
2. Canada: +2.886 seconds
3. Miami: +3.007 seconds
4. China: +3.219 seconds
5. Japan: +3.486 seconds
(11. Austria: +4.633 seconds)
It’s struck fear into the hearts of Cadillac and Williams but should also create some pangs of panic at Haas, which was only 0.077 seconds quicker at the weekend.
There’s then a long way forward to the battle between Alpine, Racing Bulls and Audi on pure pace.
There are some reasons for caution over the result.
Cadillac, as a new team, is struggling in the downforce stakes, and Hungary is a high-downforce circuit. Williams also suffered what was by far its worst qualifying performance of the season thanks to some mechanical problems. Though it’s not taking the same one-upgrade approach as Aston Martin, it is pinning its hopes on a big package in Azerbaijan, the fourth race after the break, meaning it is naturally sliding backwards.
But there is also reason to think this is just the beginning for Aston Martin.
Honda’s upgraded engine will arrive at the next race in Zandvoort, and team boss Adrian Newey says two more parts of the aerodynamic upgrade will arrive over the next two races.
“That adrenaline when you close the visor and you go into the lap, it was missed in the last few events,” Alonso said. “It was nice to go back to that feeling, and hopefully more to come in the next few races.”
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