After 13 years of Hungarian Grand Prix winners failing to win the Formula 1 championship, Lewis Hamilton won the race last year en route to winning the title. Will that start a new trend?
Over the last decade-plus heading into the 2018 Formula 1 season, it was almost a foregone conclusion that if you won the Hungarian Grand Prix, you would not go on to win the championship. No driver had won both in the same season in 14 years.
Case in point, entering last year’s 70-lap race around the 14-turn, 2.722-mile (4.381-kilometer) Hungaroring road course in Mogyorod, Hungary, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton had won the Hungarian Grand Prix a total of five times.
But despite the fact that he entered the season as a four-time Formula 1 champion in 11 seasons of competition, he had never won the Hungarian Grand Prix and a championship in the same year.
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Hamilton won the Hungarian Grands Prix in the 2007, 2009, 2012, 2013 and 2016 seasons, and he won the championships in the 2008, 2014, 2015 and 2017 seasons. The only two seasons during which he won neither were the 2010 and 2011 seasons.
Hamilton secured his sixth career Hungarian Grand Prix victory last year in dominant fashion, taking the pole position for the race and leading 56 of its 70 laps en route to a 17.123-second victory over Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in second place.
However, this trend still appeared as though it may continue, as Vettel dominated the next race, the Belgian Grand Prix, before Ferrari locked out the front row in the following race, the Italian Grand Prix.
But after Vettel made several crucial errors down the stretch, Hamilton ultimately prevailed, winning his fifth career championship by 88 points (408 to 320) over Vettel in second place.
As a result, the 34-year-old Briton became the first Hungarian Grand Prix winner to win the championship in the same season since Michael Schumacher won it en route to securing his seventh and final title back in the 2004 season.
Will Hamilton’s victory last year start a new trend?
With all things considered, Hamilton appears to have this year’s championship all but locked up. He leads teammate Valtteri Bottas by 41 points (225 to 184) in the driver standings with 11 of the season’s 21 races having been contested, and he has won seven of these 11 races.
Hamilton has had the clear upper hand over the 29-year-old Finn ever since the latter replaced 2016 champion Nico Rosberg ahead of the 2017 season, and the next closest challenger to the pair is Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen, who sits in third place in the driver standings and trails Hamilton by 63 points.
In other words, if Hamilton wins this Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix, it will likely prove to be the second consecutive season during which the winner of the race has gone on to win the championship after 13 consecutive seasons of this not happening. With Hamilton being the favorite to win, we will likely see this new trend begin.
Hamilton is a six-time Hungarian Grand Prix winner. There is only one race, the Canadian Grand Prix, that he has won more than six times, and he just became a seven-time winner of this race in June — and in controversial fashion. He knows his way around the Hungaroring perhaps better than any other track on the calendar, and this weekend should produce more of the same.
Will this year’s Hungarian Grand Prix winner go on to win the Formula 1 championship for just the second time since 2004 but for the second time in the last two seasons? Tune in to ESPN2 at 9:05 a.m. ET this Sunday, August 4 for the live broadcast of this race from the Hungaroring.