Well, we learned that the Hungaroring circuit that everyone was complaining about, produced the best GP of 2015. Action all the way down the field, with Maldonado even more of a disaster than usual with pit lane speeding, speeding behind the Safety Car, a drive-through for hitting Sergio Perez and pushing him into a spin in Turn 1 on lap 19 and subsequently being dropped to 14th with a five-second time penalty for speeding behind the Safety Car. The race featured multiple contacts, punctures, wings falling off, Safety Cars, both Mercedes looking very ‘average’ and everything else this side of a naked streaker!
The winner, and deserving it all the way, was Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari. A brilliant start to go straight into the lead, followed by his team mate Kimi Raikkonen, leaving the previously all-conquering Mercedes duo in their wake, with Hamilton getting ragged and falling off the circuit a couple of times.
Raikkonen’s moment of glory was not going to last as his MGUK (Hybrid power unit) stopped powering, ending the Finn’s back-up of Vettel.
Another poor start by Ricciardo (Red Bull) saw him drop behind his team mate Kvyat, but he soon rounded up the Russian and towards the end of the race was lining up to take both Rosberg and Vettel. However, fate intervened in the form of an overtake of Rosberg ending up with a stop for a new wing, allowing Kvyat through to second at the flag, with Ricciardo in third.
Having kept his nose clean, Verstappen (Toro Rosso) found himself fourth, but not quite as surprised as fifth man home Alonso in the McLaren Honda. Amazing! The underpowered car actually finished, and finished in the points! And even more amazing, Button in the other McLaren Honda also finished in the points in eighth.
Hamilton did manage to scrape home in sixth, admitting that he had not had a stellar day, starting from a botched start to end up understeering into Ricciardo.
Another clean noser was Romain Grosjean (“Lotus”) ending up seventh, whilst his errant team mate Maldonado was credited as being 14th, after all penalties were added up. Maldonado is no longer a joke. He is a danger and “Lotus” should hand back what is left of his USD 50 million he paid for his seat and put a real driver on the payroll.
FIndia had a disaster of a race with Hulkenberg’s front wing shaking itself off and launching the car into the barrier. His team mate, Perez summarized his race as, “The contact with Pastor compromised my race. I was as cautious around him as I could be and left him plenty of room but unfortunately it wasn’t enough.” However, many of the drivers could have said the same thing. Let us not beat about the bush, Maldonado is nothing but a mobile chicane with lots of money padding his race seat. It is pay-drivers like him which are dragging the whole of F1 down. The best drivers in the world? Not likely!
The next GP is at Spa on August 23. Let us hope it gives us as much excitement as the “boring” Hungaroring!
