A Hungorian Special

[BradSpeedMan 6]

Hey, It's 3rd practise and there aint a thread out on this yet!!! Come on people, show some love and dedication!!!!

So, after dominating practise yesterday...heheheheeheheh...who will attempt and stop Vettel this time around. It's one he still needs to tick off on his impressive CV...heheheeheheeheheeheheeh. Will it be a Lotus, or a Ferrari? Merc seems to have lost momentum

[Grabthaw the Hammerslayer 4]

Is Hungaroring that boring that people have not bothered posting?

Don't know how this circuit survives in F1? (esp. when Bernie rattles on about getting rid of Silverstone)

It's Monaco in a field..... too few opportunities for overtaking - struck me yesterday when watching in car footage that its just bend after bend....

[BradSpeedMan 6]

Is Hungaroring that boring that people have not bothered posting?

Don't know how this circuit survives in F1? (esp. when Bernie rattles on about getting rid of Silverstone)

It's Monaco in a field..... too few opportunities for overtaking - struck me yesterday when watching in car footage that its just bend after bend....

probably, I took a keen interest in trying to figure out where they could overtake , corners are all tight with no spaces, it's only on the main straight that there might be...

[Angellica 0]

It is one of the least interesting tracks of the season I have to say. Though I do have a special fond memory of the 1997 race and the move Villeneuve made on the ailing Arrows of Hill on the last lap, even though he had dominated the race up to that point. My ex husband was a Hill fan, I was a Villeneuve fan, you'd think it was my fault he got by him!!

Anyway, I am hoping Vettel can cross this off his 'not won here yet' list as well. He looks in good shape to do so right now, then again this is F1 and as dear old Murray used to say, 'anything can happen and it probably will'.

[KoolMonkey 0]

A yes Hungary. While I do remember that day Hill almost won, for me all I can recall nowdays of this circuit is this incident.

Apparently Kimi was looking down at his steering wheel or doing something, looked up and bam... right into the rear of Luizzi. A shame really as it was one of the few times in 2006 the McLaren looked like winning a race.

As for why it's still on the calendar, I have no idea. But before I'd axe this race, I'd be chopping Bahrain out first, then China. In fact the Malaysia, China, Bahrain segments of the F1 calender are to me the most boring of all. I don't mind keeping Hungary if those first two can go, followed by India and Korea. All those tracks feel the same to me, other than Bahrain which is just sand and is one of the ugliest tracks to see on television. It's just brown dirt, sand and empty stands.

I'm glad Austria is back. Now we need a French GP back as well. If not Paul Ricard, then something at least. I'd also love to see a Scandinavian GP in either Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark or the Netherlands. The "new" countries are a total sham and a bust. Turkey had the best track, but empty stands bring nothing to F1. You only have to watch Barcelona, Canada and Silverstone to see how great an event F1 can really be when the stands are packed out. Empty stands are a disgrace to F1, but FOM has gotten around this by changing the camera angles over the years to hide the empty stands.

As much as I admire Uncle Bernie, warts and all, F1 going into these new markets has been a total disaster. The empty stands, the bland venues, the lack of what seems like motorsport fans on those countries, whilst great racing tracks like Spa are each and every year put in jeopardy of getting axed shows Bernie and FOM only care about the money. History and great race tracks be damned.

[Quiet One 15]

Yet another race with the Red Bull as the only logical candidate with Kimi and Nando having to pull some kind of miracle.

Yay...so exciting!

I enjoy the races, but the championship is turning into a 2004. When the biggest threat comes from a guy that is happy to qualify 5th, you can realize that Red Bull has this championship pretty much in the bag, unless some catastrophe shows up.

So frustrating.

[Quiet One 15]

Welll the race IS exciting so far, thanks George.

[Quiet One 15]

Ridiculous drive thru for Grosjean, if it was because of the incident with Button!

[Quiet One 15]

I like Webber. Hamilton, not so much...but wow, Lewis, wow!

[Quiet One 15]

Don't get too greedy, Seb. Why are you complaining about Kimi????? He was perfect.

[LabradoRacer 2]

Happy that Lewis won, but he owes it in large part to Jenson Button and the track. Still, a win is a win.

[Ikyrotz 0]

Surprisingly entertaining Hungarian GP.Lewis deserved the win, Grosjean drove great and was quite hard-done by the penalty, but he lost the battle for the win already when he crashed with Button and had to get new tires. Kimi made a nice comeback after being stuck behind Massa and Sutil for quite a while, magnificent defensive driving at the end there. Red Bull was surprisingly slow and Ferrari was nowhere to be noticed, Alonso must be somewhat concerned.

[KoolMonkey 0]

Quiet One, I think the drive through was for the errm... ok I'm not sure now as I also saw something on the screen saying such and such would be investigated after the race.

Hard luck for Grosjean today, I think he had a fantastic race. Great race by Kimi. I was a little concerned when I heard Vettel complaining over the radio, and the in the room before the podium it looked a little tense, but Vettel to his credit defused things (that's even if there was some tension) by saying what he said in that nice manner. Kimi's smile afterwards in the background where they were chatting showed things were well. Thus for us hopers of Kimi to RBR, it might still be alive.

Credit to Hungary for the huge crowds. It might be historically a boring race (this years edition was great imho), but the full stadiums always are a good sign.

One thing that annoyed me to no end... Crofty and Brundle going on about how Kimi probably would have to make a 3rd stop, and that he probably wouldn't make it to the end of the race. Those of us running the live timing apps could see they were full of it. Kimi did 29 laps on his second stint, he only had to do 28 to reach the chequered flag all while on a lesser fuel load. The info was there for anyone to see, yet they kept going on about it. From the timings on the app, I calculated Kimi would be in second after all in front had pitted, but I didn't expect Vettel to be so close. Pretty cool app the Official F1 app, so if you aren't using it, it's worth a shot despite it being rather expensive.

For once Lotus actually got a strategy right. Counting last year and this year, I think they have lost 2-3 race wins thus far with poor & delayed decision making. They had a real shot at the German GP, but came up short.

I will say this, for a split second when I saw that Merc off the road all in smoke I was like OMG yessss!!! Turns out it was only Nico He's racking up a bad record of falling back in races despite his wins this year. Fighting with Massa and Perez all day doesn't create legends.

Drive of the day I still give to Kimi. But Grosjean would have got it even if he didn't win and came second if he'd stayed clean without that drive through. He is maturing as a driver which is good news for him.

[Argento Reloaded 1]

The "chosen" Ricciardo -who was beaten by Guerrieri and Petrov before he arrive to F1- is still 2 points behind Vergne and despite started the race 6 positions ahead quilified behind his teammate. Ok, Vergne is not spectacular but Ricciardo? Is in the same Buemi, Algersuari, Vergne league.

[Rainmaster 7]

A more interesting race than it promised to be. I guess it was about time Hamilton won for Mercedes and maybe now he'll feel a bit more settled in. Not entirely sure that Merc can keep up such pace. In that regard, the championship does seem a little stale at the moment, with Lotus and Merc having the speed but not the consistency. It's difficult to see anyone other than Alonso beating Vettel, and at the moment even that looks very unlikely with Ferrari being off the boil.

Grosjean was interesting. Not a bad race but he still isn't acting like a racing driver. More like Massa in his golden days but with even worse race-craft. I think the penalty was for the pass on Massa, right? A very bold pass but you can see why he got the penalty, harsh as it was, from a technical point of view. Good as that overtake was, it's sort of hard to appreciate coming from Grosjean because you know with most drivers they are balancing the risks and making a calculated decision. I still don't think Grosjean is doing that, he just goes for anything regardless. The contact with Button was just plain dumb and unnecessary. There is a very fast driver there, but not yet a racing driver.

I'm not fully convinced Ricci is good enough for a top seat, either. I guess it depends how strong of a driver they want, presumably they'd want the strongest. But he has at least two things in his favour compared to Webber: he's younger and probably hungrier for results, and he'll come into the team with a positive attitude believing he can beat Vettel at some point. The latter will only last for so long, and his lack of experience might hurt him. So I'm not sure he's even capable of better things than Webber, to be honest. But it's not us he needs to convince.

[Rainmaster 7]

Prepare to have your hearts melted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmJKtREdxcg

[Quiet One 15]

Awwwww

It's like a big not-too-fuzzy teddy bear that likes to crash in the back of Kimi's Ferrari!

[Rainmaster 7]

Perhaps you find this one more interesting Andres

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRYouzaKZq4

[Ikyrotz 0]

Perhaps you find this one more interesting Andres

I may be missing something, but I'm quite surprised how seriously bbc seem to take this rumor. Isn't Alonso's manager also manager for some of the Red Bull junior drivers (Carlos Sainz Jr., I believe, at least)? Makes sense for him (the manager) to be spotted to talk with Red Bull then, and it doesn't have to have anything to do with Alonso going to Red Bull. If Red Bull is worried that Kimi would destabilize the team if brought along, I couldn't imagine them even considering partnering Seb with Alonso.

[Rainmaster 7]

I didn't know that! But it's odd how Alonso didn't just say that and instead gave some kind of cheeky smile. Still, the rumours are not particularly helpful and given how political Alonso is I wonder if there isn't more to it. Anyway, whatever the case, I can't imagine Alonso is seriously bidding for a seat at Red Bull either.

[Quiet One 15]

Indeed.

I can't see anything they can give Alonso that he can't get from Ferrari. A championship winning car? Sure, along with a civil war with Seb. You know, there's a reason why most teams go with the number one and number two drivers' policy. There's only one WDC cup. Having the top two best drivers in the best car guarantees a WCC (almost), guarantees a lot of drivers' management nightmares, and the possibility of a third drivir capitalizing from the civil war. In short, a 2007 even without a spygate. And that would last for a year, tops. A strong driver and a weaker one is much more stable, the weaker one can help secure valuable points (unless his name is Massa) and will act as a team mate when team tactics are required, not as a rival which makes team tactics impossible.

Even the Kimi-Seb pairing would suffer, even if it might not explode as spectacularly as the Alonso-Lewis pairing. The closest to this kind of lineup was Jenson-Lewis and it was showing obvious signs of stress by last year when Lewis announced his departing. It was stable only while one of the two strong drivers was clearly weaker (Jenson at the beginning), but as they became closer in performance, tension ensued. I doubt they would have been able to keep both under control this year.

On the other hand, Kimi already has expressed that he is willing to take a number two (for example, at Schumacher's lifetime achievement ceremony at Interlagos)

[Quiet One 15]

I didn't know that! But it's odd how Alonso didn't just say that and instead gave some kind of cheeky smile. Still, the rumours are not particularly helpful and given how political Alonso is I wonder if there isn't more to it. Anyway, whatever the case, I can't imagine Alonso is seriously bidding for a seat at Red Bull either.

I don't think he is political. I watched many interviews of him in Spanish and he doesn't come out as a cynical manipulator. But he does have some of Kimi's dislike/despise for the press, although he tries to conceal it more as he works on his PR (I guess he hired some kind of advisor or Ferarri gave him one...he has changed since his Renault/McLaren days).

Many of the times people said that he was being cynical he was obviously just taking the p**s out of the press. Like with his pic with Webber.

[Ikyrotz 0]

On the other hand, Kimi already has expressed that he is willing to take a number two (for example, at Schumacher's lifetime achievement ceremony at Interlagos)

Does that mean that all the other drivers are just full of it, for not willing to do the same?

[Quiet One 15]

Does that mean that all the other drivers are just full of it, for not willing to do the same?

Good one!

[Rainmaster 7]

I don't think he is political. I watched many interviews of him in Spanish and he doesn't come out as a cynical manipulator. But he does have some of Kimi's dislike/despise for the press, although he tries to conceal it more as he works on his PR (I guess he hired some kind of advisor or Ferarri gave him one...he has changed since his Renault/McLaren days).

Many of the times people said that he was being cynical he was obviously just taking the p**s out of the press. Like with his pic with Webber.

Hmm, well I do tend to think of him as a political sort of driver, or a driver who can play that game and understands that game. I know the word "political" is seen as pejorative all of the time these days, but I don't necessarily think it is, I certainly don't consider him some "cynical manipulator"! In some cases a political mindset will be good (probably very useful at Ferrari, to be honest), and in some cases bad, but I'm sure Alonso has it. I'm equally sure Vettel has it, just to be clear(er) in what I am talking about. On the other hand, drivers like Kimi and Hamilton just don't seem as interested or savvy respectively in that department.

Of course, you are right about Alonso and RB, it wouldn't make any sense.

As for Kimi, he's a lucky man. He took the opportunity to show he didn't give a sh#t by giving a sh#t, not an opportunity many people get.