Drivers React After The Race | 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix

I was pretty disappointed with my first lap, yeah with turn two, I don't know what happened, but I think I was a bit aggressive on my brake balance and a bit aggressive on the brakes and I just lost the rear and kept losing it, which cost me and of course cost me to Oscar, but I think it was clear, the fact I could stay within eight tenths one second every single lap, like I knew if I had one opportunity to have some clean air, to extend, to undercut, I could win the race today, even without the misfortune that he obviously, he had today, so a shame for the team from that side of things, but I was still convinced I could win and the pace was just, was just incredible. Hey Maxwell, considering how bad the car was to drive by the sides of it, P2's not bad is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it was very tough out there, I think the start and the first lap in general to, you know, to gain a position and then I could keep the Ferraris behind for a while, then of course we got undercut because they were on the soft, managed to jump ahead of Lewis again, which I think was very critical in that stint, but on the hard tyre also, yeah, just struggling a lot with basically the same things as yesterday, with like a lot of instability, so it was really like a survival out there to try and just keep it together and then, yeah, long stint on the soft at the end and I saw the VSC of course coming, I was like, oh my god, not again, but we hung in there and, yeah, of course to hang on to second for us was a really, really strong result. Yeah, it was a tough race, we struggled a little bit with the deck, but the conditions were difficult for everyone, it was very hot, track was very slippery and it was really easy to go over the limit of the tyre, but initially I wanted to go for one stop, but then the team said we're not sure about tyre life so we better box and, yeah, then obviously the VSC came out and found myself the two Ferrari right behind and, yeah, it was not easy to hold on. Charles, I felt for you right at the start, what happened down there and I guess that really showed the story for your race, didn't it? Yeah, I mean I knew it was a critical moment of the race and unfortunately I did the right procedure, but for some reason, you know, we all put the settings of the car to a certain place for the grip we expect and for whatever reason that we need to analyse, we have overestimated the grip that was on the inside. We knew there was a difference between right and left, but it was more than what we expected. Frustrated, disappointed to come away with so little, given the car was good, the team did a great job, but ultimately these last few races have been costly with mistakes from myself. But in terms of just looking at the bigger picture, it has been a better first half of the season, hasn't it? So can you head into the summer break with lots to work on? It's been okay. It's not been perfect from my side, so I really got to work hard to try to figure out how I can do better in the second half. I'm happy with the race starts and then I don't know what happened on the medium tyre, just absolutely nowhere. I was following Kimi well in the first couple of laps and then they completely drove away from me after five or six laps, they were gone. That was it for me. I think the pace on the hard, on both sets of hard was very strong, but on the medium we are absolutely nowhere and that's really ruined our race. Hey George, well obviously the start ruined your race, so we never really got to see what you could do. The fact that you fought back from P18, is that something at least? Yeah, I mean I can't really make it up at the moment. Not sure what happened at the start, I sort of did all my procedures as normal, but engine just had a bit of a mind of its own and wasn't working as expected, so the break probably couldn't come out ahead of time. I was going to say time for a reset, but what is the mindset going into it? Because there's been some real high points at the start of the year and you haven't actually driven badly, it's just it hasn't really worked out, I've definitely driven badly at points, but it's yeah, it's just been a bit of a roller coaster, you know, it's really not been a smooth season whatsoever and just, I don't really have a mindset to try and forget about racing for a bit and try and come back stronger. Yeah, very happy, I mean I was honestly *** yesterday, just did a terrible job in qualy and put ourselves in a bad position, especially when we had a very fast car and obviously I knew it'd be good today, so focused on the start and the first lap and we're able to move forward and have a good race. Yeah, I mean good, obviously better to have points than not, it's been a long time coming this season, you know, there was many occasions and opportunities this year where it should have happened, but it didn't for various reasons, so that was, you know, annoying, but you know, that's racing sometimes for you, you know, I and the team knew it's there, it was just a matter of time and putting it together and finally, you know, the pieces fell into place, we converted, solid job yesterday and today and got the reward. Well Arvid, you really had to fight for that point out there, what's the kind of emotion after that? I'm not really sure, I mean obviously it's a good day for the team, I'm very happy for them, they've given us a good car all weekend, the pit stops again were really good, double points, P5 in the championship, so a good way to go into the summer break, but obviously I'm not the happiest in my race. And from that perspective, personal reflections from this race and the season as well, I think it's six races and the points now as well, so what's the bigger picture for you? Yeah, obviously it's a nice stat and I think overall it has been a very strong first half to the year, I think I've, you know, had a lot of good moments where I've shown what I can do, I think yesterday was another example of that. Yeah, I think I gave it all, obviously it was not an easy race, I tried a one-stop strategy, it was tough to make it work obviously, with the hard tyre being quite a bad compound comparing to the soft, so I had to stand a lot that first stint, survived like 30 laps with the soft, but after that, putting the hard, I survived another 20 laps and then after it was pure deck, so tough one. Well considering the pace of the car, you weren't too far off a point today, I know it's not quite what you wanted, but what's your reflection after that? Two seconds, so yeah, I mean from that front it's not too far, on the other side I must say it felt bad out there, I really can't drive the way I'd like, the car doesn't really respond well at all and there's a lot of work ahead of us, so yeah, we started the year probably edging the midfield, we clearly dropped back in the order and it's going to be very important to find that performance and put it onto the car for the second part of the year. Hey Lance, well at least you got some laps on the board to learn about this new car, were you able to fight a little bit out there today for a change? Yeah, we were in the mix with the midfield for the first time this year, so it was good. And how do you feel heading into the summer break, knowing that there's a Honda update coming, there's a few more parts in the car and the team look like they're in the right again? Yeah, we just have to keep pushing, I think we took a big step this weekend, so we just have to keep pushing. Yeah, I think it was good to feel again the competitors and yeah, I think, especially at the beginning as you said, I think we had the pace to follow more or less the midfields and yeah, that was good and hopefully a good baseline to work with this new car. Well Frank, it looked like a tough old race out there to try and get something out of the car, what was it like, were you a bit frustrated, maybe you weren't able to make more progress? Yeah, it was quite frustrating, I think just being at the pace first of all and then the balance was really poor, I don't really know what happened, I think we need to go through it and understand a bit more because it felt very far off the pace and struggling a lot with the car, so yeah, I need to have a good look and come back stronger after summer. I mean, we did a good start once again, you know, we were on, almost in points position over P12 or P11, which was very good, but we can't keep the cars behind, you know, we are in fact not quick enough unfortunately to keep them, we degrade also quite a lot, so you know, we need to look at putting more performance on the car, you know, definitely we need to look at the next upgrades on the car, I hope that they will make a difference, obviously the team will be on it. There's a lot of positives to take away from this weekend on my side, I'm quite happy that we managed to extract the maximum out of the car and that we got the consistency from Friday to Saturday to Sunday, you know, there, now we obviously need more performance out of the package. Sorry, I just want to talk about that positive because I feel like this weekend's been your most complete weekend all year, good to kind of do that before the summer break and wait while you wait for that performance? Yeah, definitely, I mean it's going to help us sleep better during the holidays, but yeah, now that the consistency has been there we need to look at what are the next steps to get more performance. Yeah, it was a battle out there today, it was very tough, so a bit of a wake-up call I think for all of us, just how, we were slow but it was how we were slow, so so difficult, I think it was difficult for everyone but really tough to get a rhythm, the wind was changing quite a lot, it was very gusty out there and for us that was very difficult to drive, so yeah, you know, hopefully we can do a good, well, take a good rest as a team and come back fresh. It's not going to look like it but we had a much better race than expected, on a positive note we were quite a bit quicker than expected in the race and we were fighting the hasses that we were not expecting to fight and we were actually ahead of them at one point, having a good race and then yeah, the incident with Piastri that could have been avoided with a bit better communication and a bit of bad luck with the dead angle in my mirror, I just didn't know he was there, so I had no clue, he was laughing at us and he was in my dead spot in the mirror, the five second penalty and then at the end there, a very unnecessary pit stop to finish behind Berman and Alex when we should have finished in front without the pit stop. Yeah, it was certainly a very long day, as we were probably anticipating, you know, the lack of quality pace was almost exacerbated in race trim, just so much sliding and degradation, yeah on top of that I just couldn't overtake so I got stuck and didn't have any pace anyway. Yeah, obviously pretty disappointed, I feel like lap one was good, the first stint in general was reasonable I felt and then struggled for pace in the hard but you know, even with that the pace was pretty good I felt like, sorry the pace was not good but you know, I had track position and I felt like even though I was struggling, I felt like I could hang on but from that point onwards pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did. Yeah, from that moment if I guess the strategy and the way that you ended up behind to obviously the problem that forced you to retire, kind of what is the mindset now going into the summer? Yeah, I mean just try and reset and find some pace, that was the biggest thing but you know, on the strategy side, you know, you don't plan a strategy for getting taken out by a backmarker so I can't blame the team at all for that so yeah, just try and improve over the break, have a bit of time to reset and then come back again. Hey Ece, obviously it's not the way you wanted to end the first half of the season, just how frustrating is it for your race to end that way? Yeah, it's always frustrating when you know, when you are not able to finish the race, I still believe that there was, we still had an issue with the rear of the car, we changed the gearbox yesterday so we don't really know what's in there, I think there's plenty of information that we need to gather and we go from there. So how much work do the team have to do really over this break to just try and haul you back into contention? I think quite a bit, you know, to get on top of things. I'm sure that no one is pleased with the performance, current performance. Aston Martin is a great motivation for us, you know, like we are able to put our things together, we are able to find a lot of lap time. Valtteri, obviously tough to retire from that race, was it a brake issue in the end? Yeah, brakes overheating, I had to finish the race quite early which is very unfortunate because we had upgrades for that particular issue for this weekend. So yeah, it's sad but again a point to learn from. And obviously it's summer break now to kind of look back on that issue and obviously the first half of the season there is a lot of work to do isn't there? Yeah, a lot of work to do so actually I think like good timing for the summer break to reset, look in detail what we can do better again and then yeah just reset and go again.