The Undercut: One last blast before they hit the beach!
Are you Hungary for some great action?
Here we are then, at the halfway point of the season, with one race to go before your Twitter timeline for August becomes full of pictures of drivers toiling away in the gym, with some inspirational captions like "#NeverGiveUp", "#AlwaysWorkingForTheGoal", etc, etc.
Of course, this is just a façade. They simply pop in to the gym on the Monday after the Hungarian Grand Prix, get a load of pictures done of them sweating on a selection of torture devices, then tweet them over the course of the month, all while sipping pina coladas on a yacht somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, we believe you…
So, what to expect from the Hungarian round?
The Hungaroring still has that tag of being ‘Monaco without the walls’ in that you can’t overtake here, and races are a procession.
This did, up until maybe five or so years ago, be more often than not, the case. Recent years though, maybe down to a combination of car design, the range of Pirelli tyres on offer and track resurfacing, have produced some great races.
Indeed, of the 33 drivers who have got pole here, only 13 of them have gone on to win the race.
Agreed, overtaking is pretty much limited to the braking zone for turn one, where you are guaranteed to see a few hopeful lunges, though some of this over-exuberance at the start can end up in turn two, as Daniel Ricciardo found last year when he got punted out of the race by team-mate, Max Verstappen.
All went well here last year for Red Bull. For about 15 seconds.
This circuit, where out-and-out power is not such an influence, is said to be a Red Bull track, a chassis track, which means those with not such great designs, (no need to mention the obvious names) could suffer – but with rain predicted over the weekend, anything can happen. Apart from a McLaren win of course, I’m not getting that carried away.
For what is supposed to be a 'Mickey Mouse' track, a look at the list of winners here over the years shows you need to be something of a strong pedaller.
Lewis Hamilton has won a record five times, Fernando Alonso took his first win here and Sebastian Vettel took the top step on our last visit.
Excepting Aussie Red Bull pair Mark Webber and Ricciardo, who were victorious in 2010 and 2014 respectively, for the last ten years, the race has only ever been won by a world champion.
Winners commemorated at the Hungaroring. Here are er.. ‘Louis’ and what appears to be Sylvester Stallone.
The tight nature of the track always encourages a bit of wheel banging – who can forget the ‘Suck my balls honey’ spat last year between Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg?
More of the same please. I mean the wheel banging, not the balls thing.
This being, as mentioned, the last race before the summer break, makes it an important one, especially for our two title contenders, Lewis and Sebastian.
Soon Fernando, soon…
Seb of course needs to get his German Grand Prix nightmare behind him while Lewis would no doubt like to extend his championship lead before he goes off to Grenada and cracks open the cigars.
It’ll be a long wait until the Belgian Grand Prix for whoever has a bad weekend in Budapest.
Thursday track walk and Sauber team strategist, Ruth Buscombe, is well off line.
So, what has been happening in the F1 news away from the track?
Rather amusingly, and for no reason anybody can fathom, Wednesday’s Tour de France stage from Bagnères-de-Luchon, had an F1 grid style start.
It was a truly hilarious sight, as with the lights on red, yellow jersey holder Geraint Thomas leaned lazily on his handlebars and as the lights went green, they just gently rolled off as they normally do. It had all the drama of a bowl of porridge.
Le Tour tried to emulate Le F1. It didn’t work.
Later the same day, Thomas said there would be ‘no F1 style fix’ to the race result. This is a bit rich, coming from a sport where the general team aim is to make sure well ahead of the event who the winner will be.
It is sad though that F1 has become a byword for fixed results or predictable outcomes. Other commentators like to use this old chestnut a lot, most notably those in MotoGP and the BTCC, so let’s just hope we get another Hockenheim type day on Sunday to shut them up.
Elsewhere, Hamilton had one of his social media moments, saying on Instagram that the ex-F1 drivers on Sky didn’t have a good word to say about him. He based this on watching just one race, but he could do with watching a few more, as any regular viewer will know, as good as it is, Sky can often be a Lewis fanfest.
Meanwhile, Jacques Villeneuve was being Jacques Villeneuve, this time the focus of his ire was Hamilton, for 'acting like he was in Hollywood', and everything 'being staged' for the show.
He also reckons Lewis thinks he is Jesus, kneeling by his car when it broke down, before delivering a sermon and pointing to the heavens after the race.
Not Jesus, yesterday.
Now, as far as I know, Jesus never raced in F1 and if Lewis feels his faith helps him then that surely is up to him and nothing to do with anybody else?
Another Canadian in the news is Lance Stroll, who is rumoured to be taking daddy’s millions to Force India next year. If true, it's more dire news for Williams, who are already due to lose title sponsor Martini at the end of the year.
Not only is he reckoned to be getting a seat at Force India, it has also been claimed that his father is going to buy the team outright.
This of course, as noted by senior F1 journalist Joe Saward, makes little sense. It is reckoned that Force India are on the brink of bankruptcy and that owner, Vijay Mallya, wants $250 million for the pink squad. Surely you'd just wait until the administrators come in and get it for half that price?
Whatever, as long as this brilliant little team can carry on, then it could be owned by the Pope for all I care.
One final news item of course: the sad and sudden passing of Ferrari boss and motor industry giant, Sergio Marchionne.
This will be an emotional weekend for the Scuderia and there won’t be many who’d begrudge them a win in his honour on Sunday .
Sad times at Ferrari.
So, be sure to join us as usual for qualifying and the race on Twitter with me @GrandPrixDiary and all the regulars in the DriveTribe chat channel.
See you there!
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