F1 Talk: Hamilton Wins in Hungary as Toro Rosso Shine

Lewis Hamilton heads into Formula One’s summer break with a 24 point lead over championship rival Sebastian Vettel after an exceptional qualifying and a perfectly controlled race. On a track where Mercedes should have been slow, Hamilton made the most of the conditions and the circumstances to come out on top.

Thunderstorms were around all weekend and it just lashes it down in Budapest when it rains, not just when the F1 circus is around.

Hamilton is so good in the wet. In my opinion, he’s the best driver when there’s wet conditions. He reads the lines so well and knows where the grip is and doesn’t make any mistakes in treacherous weather. His feel of the grip and the back of the car dancing around is something that’s hard to describe but it’s a talent that cannot be matched by anybody else on the current grid at this moment in time.

Hamilton has won the last nine rain affected races. This is what I count as rain affected Grand Prix:

• Japan 2014
• Great Britain 2015
• United States 2015
• Monaco 2016
• Great Britain 2016
• Brazil 2016
• China 2017
• Singapore 2017
• Germany 2018

Add his performances when it’s rained in qualifying (which I can’t remember off the top of my head) then it’s an impressive record.

It meant that Mercedes locked out the front row for Sunday. Starts have been a problem for Mercedes recently but both Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas nailed their launches. They both positioned their cars which meant neither Ferrari would have any chance of getting to the front and Bottas held off Raikkonen and Vettel through turns one, two and three.

There was then the question of whether the a one-stop strategy would work. Ferrari pitted Raikkonen to try and disrupt Mercedes and they did with Bottas having to pit in response which gave Vettel much needed clean air after running the first dozen laps or so in dirty air on a circuit which punishes your front tyres. The problem was that Hamilton was already eight seconds up the road.

It was always going to be tough for Vettel to win the race from then on in.

Personal best lap after personal best lap followed as Vettel chased Hamilton down. A small error at the 90 degree right hander of turn 12 cost him 1.2 seconds which is a lot when you’re playing with tenths of a second. Just another example of Vettel making mistakes at crucial times.

Some traffic cost Vettel around 3-4 seconds as he was stuck in dirty air and punishing his tyres even more. Hamilton had already pitted to go onto the soft tyres after his amazing first stint on the ultrasofts, were he just eased away from his teammate on pure pace, and was cruising along knowing that he may have needed his tyres at the end of the race from a hard charging Vettel.

Vettel shouldn’t have lost that much time to the backmarkers and it was interesting to hear the drivers saying they were already feeling the effect from a car in front when they were 5-6 seconds behind them. It just shows how complicated the current front wings and aerodynamics of these cars are and why change is needed. Other motorsport series can cope perfectly fine at the Hungaroring and other race tracks around the world where overtaking and racing closely is even harder.

Ferrari didn’t recognise the worst scenario so when Vettel pitted he emerged behind Bottas which was detrimental to his race. The traffic, the driver error and a slow stop cost him and us a duel between Hamilton and Vettel of which we have seen very little of this year.

As Vettel tried to overtake Bottas, Raikkonen pitted for a second time. Mercedes could have secured a 1-3 (double podium) if they pitted Bottas but they didn’t. They went aggressive to try and stop Ferrari and Vettel gaining what could be an important three points.

With hindsight, they should have pitted and they also got a second opportunity when a VSC came out when Stoffel Vandoorne stopped out on track with a gearbox problem. To be fair to Mercedes, it only became clear that it was a strategical error after Vettel and Raikkonen overtook him. For me, it was a risk worth taking especially because it’s so difficult to overtake around the Budapest circuit.

You have to have your Monaco head on and just go for track position. It was looking very good for Bottas when Vettel couldn’t overtake early on when his tyres were at his best. Perhaps the Finn could have managed his tyres better and driven more slowly around most of the lap apart from the final sector and the first two turns so that his tyres could stay more alive than they did. He was still going quite fast considering the life of his soft tyres.

We come onto the incidents that involved Bottas.

The first was a racing incident. If you’re on the inside and you aren’t more overlapping driver on the outside by three-quarters of a car length or so, then you’ve lost the corner. The guy on the outside has the right to drive to the apex.

I do think it was a little foolish of Vettel to squeeze Bottas that hard, given he’d got by and was going to have way better traction out of the corner and the inside line for T3. No need to do it, and he just put himself at risk and a DNF.

Had Vettel got a puncture or suspension damage then people would be livid at Vettel and so angry calling him all kinds of things and how he “doesn’t deserve four world championships” or whatever. He got away with it. But I think he was entitled to do it and it was Bottas’s job to brake early enough to give Vettel the apex.

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Bottas clearly had front wing damage. Daniel Ricciardo was inevitably going to overtake him but Bottas put up a fight.

Ricciardo left  ample room on the Bottas, didn’t even squeeze him but Bottas simply went straight on. The only reason that Bottas couldn’t steer was because he didn’t allow for his old tyres, and broken wing, and left his braking too late. He didn’t adapt to the circumstances.

Ricciardo had to turn in at some point. Mercedes were right to advise him to give the spot back (as he was destined to lose it anyway) to try and decrease the risk with a penalty. With that radio call Mercedes basically said “we think you should be penalised”. The 10 second time penalty was the correct decision from the stewards.

Not exactly Bottas’s best moments in F1 so far. Things didn’t help when he was called a “wingman” by Toto Wolff although that has now been cleared up.

Kimi Raikkonen scored his fifth consecutive podium. The last time he did that was in Brazil in 2007. A win still awaits for him and I do question will it ever happen. Ferrari are clearly not completely on his side but things such as first lap bravery and getting the most out of his car when it matters in qualifying are letting him down

But, his stats speaks for themselves. 99 podiums and entertaining fans for almost two decades with his drives, clean overtakes, radio, press conferences and being one of the most popular drivers on the grid. He is certainly going to be missed whenever he retires. I would love to see him win a race this season.

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Toro Rosso and Pierre Gasly were excellent last weekend. Easily best of the rest. Both cars got into Q3 and Pierre Gasly was on supreme form. For me, he’s been the best rookie of the year.

Charles Leclerc has had some standout performances this year but he is in a car which is better than people think. He’s also made some mistakes which may not have been recognised by everyone and his chance to shine in Germany in the race and in Hungary in qualifying have not been taken at all. In fact, he’s underperformed when the best drivers can usually take things to a new level when it rains.

That said, he’s still the future (or at least one of the drivers who will be the future).

Something unusual from qualifying was that all of the “works teams” were better than the customer teams in the wet conditions in qualifying. Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault and Toro Rosso were all very good. Red Bull underperformed which is unusual and surprising considering they have the best chassis on the grid and two excellent drivers when it comes to the wet.

I wonder if engine customer teams get on the fly engine map changes?  This shouldn’t be the case but it was just very strange. It might all just be a coincidence.

It looks like the Toro Rosso fundamentally is a really good car. They just need to be able to extract it consistently drivers and team. I think the team lacks references though. They don’t know why the car is quick and this makes the development more difficult.

I think Gasly would be consistent and his racecraft sublime if he was given a more predictable car. That 4th place in Bahrain still goes over my head as to how it happens.

A lot more stories came out from the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend on and off the track including Force India entering administration, which is a good thing as it turns out, Red Bull’s and Renault’s relationship hitting a new low and silly season getting sillier as every day passes.

With over three weeks until the next race, get ready for more articles on all of that plus the return of our Driver Spotlight series which will feature an F1 driver or two. Enjoy the other motorsport that’s out there!