What we fixed after Hungary, and what Norris got right

26 July 2026 · Hungarian Grand Prix

First, thank you. Several of you wrote in during and after the race, and almost everything below came from something one of you spotted.

And sorry about the notifications after the race. If your phone buzzed once it was all over, that was us reprocessing the race data. It won't happen again.

Hungary was our first race with notifications back on. The app tracked 113 moments across 70 laps, and only the big ones are meant to buzz your phone, which mostly worked. Here is what did not.

FIXED

Tyre alerts had never buzzed your phone. We forgot to add them to the list of alerts allowed to send notifications, so they reached the app and stopped there.

A tyre card contradicted itself. Its verdict on whether tyres would last only looked at their age, never the wear rate printed right above it. So tyres falling apart could still get a green tick.

We told you Hamilton's penalty was safe, and it was not. His lead over Leclerc was 4.97 seconds when he needed 5, and we rounded that up to safe instead of treating it as the coin flip it plainly was. He lost the place.

The lap 56 safety car alert never reached you. You saw 5 drivers take a free pit stop under it, with nothing telling you there was a safety car out in the first place.

2 of the 3 penalties never reached your phone, including the Sainz one for hitting Piastri.

There's no racing for a month, so we get a proper run at this list instead of patching between races. If something felt off to you in Hungary, now is the time to tell us.

Zandvoort is back on 21 August, and it's a sprint weekend: 2 races, the sprint on Saturday 22 August and the main race on Sunday 23 August. We'll be sending alerts for both.

The Race

Norris started first and lost it at the second corner. He ran wide, his teammate Piastri cut back inside him, and the lead was gone. Hungary is one of the hardest tracks all year to pass on, so that looked decisive.

Norris then spent 30 laps stuck behind him, insisting on the radio he was faster. He was right, and it did not help. The pit stops did: McLaren called Piastri in first both times, and the lap 33 stop put Norris ahead for good.

It got worse from there. Down in P4, he caught Sainz on lap 38, a full lap slower and busy fighting an Aston Martin, and Sainz should have moved aside. Instead he stayed where he was and turned into Piastri at Turn 2, and the stewards blamed him entirely for it with a 5 second penalty.

Piastri retired 18 laps later when his car broke, and his stopped car brought out the safety car.

Ferrari came here expecting a win and left with nothing on the podium. Hamilton qualified P2, dropped 3 places for blocking Piastri, and started P5. His early stop on lap 13 jumped Verstappen for exactly one lap before Verstappen took it straight back.

Ferrari pitted him again under the safety car, a call he said afterwards they should not have made. He ran as high as P3 and crossed the line P4, but he'd been caught speeding in the pit lane on that stop. The 5 second penalty dropped him behind his own teammate to P5.

Elsewhere In The Grid

Russell had the worst start of anyone. His car stuck in the wrong mode off the line and he went from P6 to P19 before the first lap was done. Then he spent an hour driving back past all of them, our alerts catching him close on Gasly, Hulkenberg, Lindblad and Lawson in turn. P7 by lap 25, and that's where he finished.

The last point came down to a chase nobody was filming. Lindblad stopped once, on lap 20, then defended P10 on that same set of tyres to the end. By lap 65 they were 44 laps old and Bortoleto was on him. He held on by half a second.

Norris won by 15 seconds and nobody had a comfortable weekend. He threw away first place on the grid and won it back in the pits. Piastri led 25 laps and retired. Ferrari were meant to win here and finished P4 and P5. Everyone now gets 4 weeks to think about it.

Have a great summer break, and we will see you at Zandvoort.