{"id":121532,"date":"2026-07-28T14:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/121532\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T14:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:50:14","slug":"even-ai-would-have-predicted-mclarens-hungary-gp-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/121532\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Even AI would have predicted McLaren’s Hungary GP win\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

After winning the first six races of the season, Mercedes<\/a> has finally had its Formula 1 dominance challenged in recent weeks \u2013 winning just two out of the last five grands\u00a0prix. However, despite advances for McLaren<\/a> that helped it take the win from pole at last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix, Silver Arrows boss Toto Wolff isn\u2019t too worried about his rivals\u2019 progress.<\/p>\n

Mercedes was the favourite heading into F1\u2019s new era in 2026, and backed that up with stellar on-track pace that was initially tough for its rivals to match. However, after upgrades for Ferrari<\/a> and McLaren \u2013 and a few issues for Mercedes \u2013 the Silver Arrows have faltered at the top in recent races.<\/p>\n

This reached a head in Hungary, where McLaren\u2019s Lando Norris<\/a> romped to pole just 0.012 seconds ahead of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and went on to win the race. Mercedes, meanwhile, had to settle for fourth and seventh in qualifying, before its championship leader Kimi Antonelli<\/a> came home in third on Sunday. But the turnaround in results for the papaya team isn\u2019t bothering Wolff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you ask the artificial intelligence who are the favourite in Budapest, the artificial intelligence is going to say McLaren,\u201d the Mercedes boss said after the race on Sunday when asked about McLaren’s step forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were the dominant team here in the last few years, I think it was one and two and something like this last year. So, definitely one of the good tracks for them, not very good for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be careful not to swing from everyone is suddenly competitive to a team is suddenly not competitive. I think they’ve definitely done a step, they are in the fight, we haven’t brought an upgrade for some time, and you can see that this is going to be a development fight also going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Toto <\/p>\n

Toto Wolff admits McLaren has “made a step” and is now “in the fight”<\/p>\n

Photo by: Sam Bagnall \/ Sutton Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The development race is a hot topic in 2026, as the ramp up in performance this year is expected to be rapid as teams get to grip with their new cars and the new regulations. Ferrari has brought a raft of new parts to the SF-26 to unlock its performance, and McLaren has steadily followed suit \u2013 with new parts arriving in Miami, Spa and Hungary.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Mercedes has been more gradual with its upgrades, which Wolff said was a symptom of F1\u2019s new cost cap era.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be really just strategic about when to bring the upgrades,\u201d he acknowledged. “Rather than just throwing it in at every grand prix like in the past, we cannot do this, so you will have to eventually put an upgrade in and probably you leapfrog a little bit the others and then it kind of flattens out and the other ones coming stronger.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, yeah, we’re bringing upgrades, we’re closely monitoring how much we can bring and at the moment cost cap wise we’re in a good spot, we’ve tried to have it a little bit more second half of the season, waited \u2013 and let’s see if that’s enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After winning the first six races of the season, Mercedes has finally had its Formula 1 dominance challenged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,34395,61472,61473,5407,61471],"class_list":["post-121532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-formula-1","tag-hungarian-gp","tag-hungaroring","tag-mercedes","tag-u2018even-ai-would-have-predicted-mclarens-hungary-gp-winu2019-why-mercedes-isnu2019t-worried"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}