So often the final centrepiece of action before Formula 1's summer shutdown, the Hungarian Grand Prix dices with drama and unpredictability like few other tracks.
It has been five years since the winner of this race started from pole. Even more striking is the fact that between 2005 and 2017, the winner of this race failed to go on and win that year's drivers' championship.
And though the tight and twisty nature of the Hungaroring has caught out yesteryear's car strengths, the borderline chance for overtaking has also invited mayhem.
In the 21st century, five drivers have won their first ever grand prix, here: Fernando Alonso, in 2003; Jenson Button, in 2006; Heikki Kovalainen, in 2008; Esteban Ocon, in 2021 and Oscar Piastri, last year.
In addition to that, Lewis Hamilton scored the first of his record-shattering 84 victories for Mercedes here, in 2013; while drivers such as Max Verstappen and George Russell have delivered their debut pole positions in the sport, at the Hungaroring.
Trends may follow, but this track always threatens to be a ground breaker.
📲 Follow The Sporting News on WhatsApp
The propensity for wet-weather drama
Any racetrack can be struck by rain, but few can range much wider between boiling temperatures and near-frequent downpours, like the Budapest track.
And with rainfall being seen as a great leveller, between teams of various competitiveness, unpredictability has naturally followed.
A wet race start in 2021 saw the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas collide with Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Sergio Perez, giving rise to Esteban Ocon's maiden, and so far only, grand prix win.
Bottas goes bowling! 🎳
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 17, 2024
A moment in the wet with huge implications for the entire grid in 2021 😳#F1 #HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/478z9MDzlG
The wet weather also disturbed the competitive order, in 2018. Ferrari looked set to storm to pole position that weekend, but the Mercedes came alive in the rain and locked out the front row, leaving Kimi Raikkonnen and Sebastian Vettel trailing slower cars on race day.
In 2014, Mercedes were all-conquering but were, on that day, the victims of the changeable weather. This led to the race being one of only three which the Silver Arrows did not triumph in that year.
Hamilton's Hungaroring history
Lewis Hamilton has established many records during his storied Formula 1 career, and many of those pages have been written at this track.
To date, his last pole position was secured here in 2023, marking his ninth pole at this track. No driver, anywhere, has recorded that many at a single circuit.
He has also won eight Hungarian Grand Prix. The first came in his debut season, in 2007, the latest came in 2020. In fact, he has only failed to win this race on one occasion, in which he led the first lap.
The last time that the 7-time world champion finished behind a teammate was 2017, where he voluntarily ceded a third position to Valterri Bottas, after he initiated a team order that got him ahead of the Finn in the first place.
Only three other times has Hamilton been bettered by a teammate. This includes 2008, when a puncture thwarted his victory charge and in 2010, when a mechanical failure prevented him from seeing the chequered flag.
Verstappen's Hungarian GP record
Last year's race was one of the low points of the Verstappen-Red Bull partnership. Undercut by Lewis Hamilton twice, the Dutchman was vexed at the strategy calls and subsequent radio messages. His frustration, also stemming from an earlier request to hand title rival Lando Norris a position, culminated in a collision with Hamilton which relegated him to fifth.
But he has executed some fabulous drives here, too. This started with a fourth-placed finish in his rookie 2015 season.
Then, despite being downed by Hamilton to the race victory, in 2019, the Dutchman's mega and maiden pole position ensured that he was a race-long thorn to the faster Mercedes.
He also recovered from a pre-race crash, forcing his mechanics into a herculean recovery to ensure that he actually started the race, to finish second a year later.
In 2022, he recovered from tenth on the grid to score an improbable win and he won his second Hungary race by over half a minute, the year after.
First-corner battles
The run to the tight right-handed first corner is one of the longest of the season and though the inside line is less grippy than the outside line, where pole position is located, so often we see the leading cars within millimetres of one another.
With that opportunity, Max Verstappen edged ahead of Lewis Hamilton, in 2023, and Oscar Piastri did the same thing to McLaren teammate Lando Norris last season.
But first lap crashes are also frequent. As well as the aforementioned 2021 chaos, the two Alpines and Daniel Ricciardo were caught up in a crash caused by Zhou Guanyu's Sauber, at the start of the 2023 race.
Ricciardo was also a victim, when he was impacted by Red Bull teammate Verstappen, in 2017.
The importance of strategy
For what is such a tight circuit, it is remarkably common for on-track overtakes to be at the core of racing-winning success. But the importance of the pit wall cannot be understated.
In 2022, Charles Leclerc lost a chance of winning the race after his Ferrari team switched him to the hard tyres, which yielded very little grip in the overcast temperatures.
The year before, Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes misjudged the switch from intermediate tyres to the dry compound, which almost certainly cost him the race victory.
But in 2019, they were the beneficiaries as the Mercedes pit wall suddenly switched Hamilton to a two-stop strategy, which afforded him a greater tyre advantage over race-leader and eventual runner-up Max Verstappen.
The Brit's late-race surge saw him dispense of the struggling Red Bull, with the lead swapped mere laps from the chequered flag.
Latest Formula 1 news and related links
Max Verstappen locked in: exit clause nullified as Red Bull star secures top three spot
Nico Rosberg questions if Lando Norris has the error-free consistency to be world champion