With an excellent third place behind the indomitable McLarens in the Hungarian Grand Prix, Mercedes showed that they have located and solved the problems of the past few months, in contrast to Red Bull Racing, which had no idea how to find the right setup for the RB21 at the Hungaroring.
With George Russell at the bottom of the podium and Max Verstappen finishing no higher than ninth place, the difference in the fight for third place in the championship between the two rivals has been reduced to fifteen points - still in favor of the Dutchman. But for how long?
Red Bull's problems a one-off?
Red Bull was convinced that the problems in Hungary were a one-off, but at the same time, it was not entirely clear why the car was almost impossible to drive, even for Verstappen. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that throughout the entire season, Red Bull has struggled to find a good setup, where the tires last long and there is a good race speed.
Without further updates this season, it is conceivable that Red Bull will more often encounter difficult weekends. That is something Mercedes also had to deal with, but after discarding the rear suspension, the Germans have hope and expect that the dip is over. The third place in Budapest is a first indication of this.
No updates for Mercedes
Mercedes, like Red Bull, will not bring any more updates in 2025, but that does not mean the team is idling: ''It would be surprising to see anyone bringing big upgrades from this point onwards,'' explains Bradley Lord, the team representative of Mercedes, to a selected group of media including GPblog.
''It kind of slightly depends on the semantics of big, whether that means lots of items on the list of declarations or whether it means lap time and things like that.''
''But we often see that actually where the development items dry up you can still make a lot of progress in your understanding and learning about the car even with a relatively static configuration performance-wise. So we'll be aiming to do that and just race as hard as we can for the second part of the season.''
'Second place realistic for Mercedes'
Here is a warning for Verstappen, as well as his Red Bull Racing and Ferrari: ''We're in a close fight with two other teams for ultimately P2 in the championship and we'll be giving it everything we've got to end up there at the end of the year,'' Lord believes.
According to him, the second position among the constructors is realistic, because the team has 'for the majority of the season' already occupied that spot: ''There's no reason to think we can't be in absolutely taking that fight to Ferrari and to Red Bull for the rest of the year.''
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