Opinion: Alex Kalinauckas

The sight of a lone Lewis Hamilton lining up his Mercedes on the Hungaroring grid was certainly bizarre, but it was also unforgettable, entertaining and set up a thrilling race

“Mercedes maintained it was ‘100% the right decision’ to leave Hamilton out”

Formula 1 is fond of changing its rules. They were tweaked – after a fair bit of toing and froing – for 2017 to allow for standing starts to take place if races began with exploratory laps behind the safety car in wet conditions. A year later there was an update that once again allowed for additional standing starts if a race was red-flagged (this had last been done in 2001).

The 2020 Italian Grand Prix restart was the first such recurrence of the standing restart rule, and it has happened five times since then (although not at the 2021 Emilia Romagna GP, where a dry line only on the right-hand side of the grid meant the FIA used its discretion to apply a rolling safety car restart that Max Verstappen so nearly blew).

This rule tweaking has been something of a success given the drama of Lewis Hamilton going off in Baku, or Charles Leclerc roaring clear towards a shock near-win at Silverstone last month. Only George Russell might regret the 2020 Tuscan GP needing two restarts, after a poor standing start on the third time of asking cost him what would have been his first points for Williams, 19 races before they came so emotionally for the Briton and Nicholas Latifi last weekend. But in Hungary, the standing restart took a rather bizarre twist given the wet-to-dry circumstances of the race.

Unlike in Germany 2019 (which was also a wet start after an initial safety car getaway, so not a post-red flag standing start

– a subtle distinction), the conditions changed vastly. Fierce sunshine had emerged during the 30-minute intermission that resulted from Valtteri Bottas and Lance Stroll getting things so wrong in their separate incidents at Turn 1. The drivers needed to swap their intermediate tyres for slicks. And fast.

That led to 14 of the remaining 15 runners piling into the pits and leaving Hamilton taking to the grid alone. The pack had played things cautiously by refitting inters in the pitlane, which surprised Mercedes. But with the drivers able to discuss tactics with their engineers on their lap out of the pits behind the safety car, bold calls could be made. This is as opposed to doing the same on the formation lap, where this is banned – somewhat controversially, given the tedious penalties given to the Haas drivers in similar circumstances at this same event in 2020.

And they were, en masse. But it wasn’t easy, with eventual winner Esteban Ocon calling it“heartbreaking”, knowing that if it didn’t work out with a poor stop, or if he got caught waiting for cars to pass after he’d been serviced, then he was risking a brilliant and unexpected track position at a venue where overtaking is tough.

Had Hamilton also pitted, the start light system would have been set off over an empty grid, after which the pitlane exit light would have gone green and the race started from there. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff maintained that the team’s choice to leave Hamilton out was“100% the right decision”. And this is because the squad’s position at the start of the pitlane would have left it vulnerable to Hamilton having to wait for cars to pass once he’d been serviced.

That is a logical defence, and Mercedes’own calculations reckoned he would have lined up sixth in the queue – likely aided by Fernando Alonso appearing to back off to create a gap to allow Ocon to leave the Alpine pitbox before he arrived. Yet sixth is far better than 14th – where Hamilton found himself once he’d done his sole full racing lap on the inters and pitted.

In terms of having Hamilton take the start solo and F1’s image, from one perspective it did look extremely odd, to the point of being pretty silly. But it was also thoroughly excellent entertainment in the moment and set the scene for the rest of the race. Ocon was established up front with the pursuing Sebastian Vettel, while Hamilton had to race back from the rear of the field.

Had he rejoined in front of Alonso in the queue, logic dictates that Hamilton would have won this race, and probably with ease, although he likely would have still needed the aggressive two-stop call or to have created a tyre-life offset against his remaining rivals ahead, given the Hungaroring’s tight nature meant his early passes on Antonio Giovinazzi and Mick Schumacher weren’t simple.

Further, preventing drivers from switching tyres in circumstances such as the restart last Sunday would regulate away legendary F1 moments such as Spyker’s Markus Winkelhock leading at the Nurburgring in 2007, as was called to mind this time last year with the penalties for Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean.

There almost certainly needs to be a wider safety review of all the cars and crews crowding the pitlane at the same time, as the crash involving Kimi Raikkonen and Nikita Mazpein was potentially very dangerous, and was disastrous for the

Russian as it put him out through no fault of his own (and it held up Pierre Gasly too).

But, overall, the sight of a world champion taking the start solo will go down as a famous F1 image, and it produced a brilliant race that might otherwise have been a damp squib.