Round 12 of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship continued Saturday at Hungaroring, Budapest with the qualifying sessions for Sunday's 70-lap Hungarian Grand Prix. The qualifying sessions used F1's 'Alternative Tyre Allocation' which saw the Hard tyre mandated for Q1, with the Medium in Q2 and Soft for Q3.

At the end of the day's activities seven time World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, put his Mercedes Racing's W14 on the pole with a Q3 quickest qualifying time of 1:16.609 seconds. Points leader, Max Verstappen, qualified outside the pole with a lap time just three-thousandths of a second (0.003s) behind Hamilton.

The pole was the 104th of Hamilton's career and his 9th at Hungaroring - setting an F1 record for the most poles at a single circuit. Hamilton has not seen a pole in 33 races where he qualified P1 at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2021.

"I didn't expect that we'd be fighting for P1 coming here today," said Hamilton. "When I started my final lap, I gave it absolutely everything. There was nothing left in it."

Hamilton came close to not getting out of Q1, running P17 with one minute left in the session. The British native raced up to P7.

"We made some good decisions with the set-up overnight and the drivers moved it in the right direction in FP3. The car we had today gave them confidence and allowed them to push," said Toto Wolff, Mercedes Team Principal & CEO.

Hamilton's teammate, George Russell, had the exact opposite type of afternoon at Budapest - not making it out of Q1.

Russell, looking to improve on his final lap in Q1, suffered from traffic on his out lap and, with the tyres not in their optimal window, was knocked out in P18.

"We made a mistake with George," said Wolff. "We should have put him in a much better position on track and we've apologized to him for that."

"There's a gentleman's agreement that you don't overtake one another as time is running out. He had a number of cars move ahead of him though and that obviously screwed up his last lap," added Wolff.

Three teams saw both of their cars make it into Q3: Red Bull, McLaren and, surprisingly, Alfa Romeo.

Running with upgrades introduced in Britain, both Alfa Romeo's made it into Q3 and qualified P5 (Zhou) and P7 (Bottas). Zhou was quickest in Q1. It was the best team qualifying performance for the Hinwil, Switzerland based team since the 2012 season.

"By fine tuning the upgrades we introduced in Silverstone, we were able to unlock that extra performance our cars needed to make a step forward: qualifying in fifth and seventh place today has been confirmation of the effort put in at the factory over the recent weeks," said Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Alfa Romeo Team Representative.

Pos	Driver		Team		Time		Gap

1	Hamilton	Mercedes	1:16.609	127.906 mph
2	Verstappen	Red Bull	1:16.612	0.003
3	Norris		McLaren		1:16.694	0.085
4	Piastri		McLaren		1:16.905	0.296
5	Zhou		Alfa Romeo	1:16.971	0.362
6	Leclerc		Ferrari		1:16.992	0.383
7	Bottas		Alfa Romeo	1:17.034	0.425
8	Alonso		Aston Martin	1:17.035	0.426
9	Perez		Red Bull	1:17.045	0.436
10	Hulkenberg	Haas		1:17.186	0.577
11	Sainz		Ferrari		1:17.703	
12	Ocon		Alpine		1:17.841	
13	Ricciardo	AlphaTauri	1:18.002	
14	Stroll		Aston Martin	1:18.144	
15	Gasly		Alpine		1:18.217	
16	Albon		Williams	1:18.917	
17	Tsunoda		AlphaTauri	1:18.919	
18	Russell		Mercedes	1:19.027	
19	Magnussen	Haas		1:19.206	
20	Sargeant	Williams	1:19.248	

(image provided by Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN)