Red Bull’s lack of pace on Friday looks like business as usual: Practice data analysis

McLaren were comfortably quickest in practice at the Hungaroring on Friday. Red Bull were eight tenths of a second off the pace, but as usual they look likely to come back into contention on Saturday.

Teams’ 2024 performance in context

McLaren was clearly the team to beat in Hungary last year. However while the team’s drivers locked out the front row of the grid, Max Verstappen only missed pole position by less than five hundredths of a second in his Red Bull.

Those two teams had more than half a second on their rivals in qualifying. However Alpine suffered a terrible weekend, lapping almost one-and-a-half seconds off the next-slowest car.

Teams’ progress vs 2024

It’s therefore no surprise to see Alpine are immediately in better shape this year. While most teams got close to their quickest times from 2024 on Friday, only Alpine beat theirs, and did so by almost half a second.

The other striking detail in the year-on-year changes is how much slower Red Bull are. They are almost twice as far from their 2024 lap times as the next-worst team, Mercedes – who were far from disappointed with their pace.

Teams’ 2024 and 2025 times

Red Bull have often lapped far from their pace on Friday only to improve drastically on Saturday. That hasn’t just been the case this year. In Hungary last year they found 2.7 seconds from Friday to Saturday.

First and second practice times

The most unusual feature of Red Bull’s performance on Friday was that Verstappen was slower than his team mate. If he had his usual four or five tenths of a second advantage he would have been on a par with Charles Leclerc’s pace as he was at Spa.

Aston Martin performed poorly at Spa, qualifying on the back row of the grid. But they appear to be in better shape at the Hungaroring even if their places in the top five flatter their performance.

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2025 Hungarian Grand Prix

• Why Piastri believes he and Norris can avoid a Senna-Prost style fall-out
• Alonso felt “no pain” from back injury when he returned to car after missing practice
• Red Bull’s lack of pace on Friday looks like business as usual: Practice data analysis
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