Red Bull achieve podium and double top-6 finish at Hungarian Grand Prix

Red Bull achieved a podium and a double top-6 finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix, with Max Verstappen finishing second and Isack Hadjar taking sixth.

The Milton Keynes-based team achieved a decent haul of points at the race in Budapest, with Verstappen taking a third podium in four races while Hadjar was able to return to the top 6 after missing out at the previous round.

The podium finish saw Verstappen climb a place in the standings to 6th, moving up to 109 points and jumping above Oscar Piastri after the Australian McLaren driver suffered a race-ending gearbox failure. Meanwhile, Hadjar remains 8th and is now up to 68 points.

Red Bull remain 4th in the standings ahead of F1’s summer break, with the Milton Keynes-based team on 177 points. They sit 43 points behind 3rd place McLaren and 111 ahead of their junior team Racing Bulls, who jumped above Alpine to move into 5th in the championship after a double-points finish in Hungary.

The two Red Bull drivers made a decent start to the Hungarian Grand Prix. Verstappen rose up from 4th to 3rd, with the Dutchman passing the slow-starting Charles Leclerc and holding off an attempted charge by Leclerc’s Ferrari teammate Lewis Hamilton. Meanwhile, Hadjar was able to move up from 8th to 7th after George Russell’s Mercedes kicked into anti-stall on the grid and dropped back.

Verstappen was brought into the pits for the first time on lap 15 but would be undercut by Hamilton, who pit a lap earlier. Unwilling to stay behind the Ferrari, however, Verstappen made a big divebomb at the start of lap 16 to wrestle the place back off Hamilton and unlike a similar move in 2024, he made it stick to take the position ahead of Hamilton back.

Hadjar would go long and would briefly lead, although he would be bypassed by the McLarens and Verstappen, though he was able to briefly keep Hamilton at bay before pitting.

Initially, Verstappen would pit and again be undercut by Hamilton, but when Piastri retired with a gearbox problem with 14 laps to go, Red Bull chose to keep the Dutchman out while others at the top end pit.

Ferrari’s choice to pit Hamilton saw the British driver come out behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and with the two struggling to lap heavy traffic in a race where the blue-flag system didn’t work properly, it meant Verstappen was able to stay ahead despite his tyres fading in the final stages.

The result saw Verstappen take a third podium in four races, entering the summer break in decent form. Hadjar, meanwhile, settled for 6th, though he was able to beat Russell.

Red Bull will now have a break as F1 goes on its summer break, with the sport set to return for the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort in late August.