Lapping the Hungaroring, with Sergio Perez

The Hungarian Grand Prix has had a tendency to deliver drama and good racing in recent years, after previously taking place at one of the toughest venues to overtake on across the calendar. With a best finish of third in 2023, your guide to a lap of the Hungaroring is Sergio Perez, who knows what it takes to secure a podium around this track.

There's not many breaks around the Hungaroring, a lap of this track is non-stop, constant driving. But it's a nice track to drive, I like it. It's a lot of low-speed corners, but it's a track that can be really enjoyable and one that I do enjoy coming to a lot.

When it comes to the key setup considerations you have to have, I think you need to have really good entrance stability to be able to throw your car in and make up the lap time on the entry of each corner. It's really important. So having a really good balance on corner entries is crucial.

Without a lot of straights, it's all about corner entry at the Hungaroring. Simon Galloway/Getty Images

There's obviously not many long straights and a lot of it flows together, so I wouldn’t say there is any one specific key section to the track that is central to a good lap time. I think it really requires you to be on it throughout because always there is no real stop between one corner to the other.

Having that momentum through the lap means it’s important that you focus on your tires as well, not taking too much of them too early so that there is still performance in the final sector – that’s a key to it.

It's quite a unique challenge as a circuit. Just with the amount of cornering, I think it's a pretty unique out of all the tracks we go to on the calendar.

And around here, the power units should be far more suited to a lap. I think we're coming from the worst place – which was Belgium last weekend – whereas I think here it's going to be a lot better. So I expect a lot less talk about these issues.

Hungarian Grand Prix schedule (all times Eastern):

Friday, July 24
Practice 1, 7:30-8:30am
Practice 2, 11:00am-12:00pm

Saturday, July 25
Practice 3, 6:30-7:30am
Qualifying, 10:00-11:00am

Sunday, July 26
Race, 9:00-11:00am