Hungarian Grand Prix Review

The basic facts have been recounted ad nauseam. At the start of Q3, Hamilton disobeyed a team agreement and refused to let Alonso through as part of their respective fuel burn strategies. Hamilton claimed that it was because Raikkonen was too close to Alonso, and he risked letting the Ferrari by as well, although you'd think that with a well-timed lift that could have been easily avoided. But this meant that they were out of their planned sequence when they came in for their tyre stops before their flying laps.

On their final stops, Alonso was firstly held in the pits for around twenty seconds, before the lollipop went up - the universal signal for the driver to go. Alonso did not, and waited for another ten seconds, during which time Hamilton was queued up behind. Fernando finally left, sprinted his out-lap, began his flyer with just 0.6s left on the clock in the session, and took pole off Hamilton with a scintillating lap on scrubbed tyres. Not surprisingly, Lewis failed to make it around in time to start one last flyer.

Firstly, if nothing else this was yet another sad indictment on the 'fuel-burn' nature of Q3, which we had already critiqued in our USA GP review. Not only does it penalise those at the lower end of the top ten, because they don't get to adjust their fuel strategies post-qualifying, and not only has the system robbed us of seeing who was genuinely the fastest driver on track, but if teams treat it as such a precise science as McLaren made it out to be, that is faintly ridiculous and makes a mockery of spectators and journalists.

You'd think that a team of McLaren's expertise could adjust things on the run after Hamilton's disobedience had thrown their tactics off the rails, but, as the stewards reported after their investigations, almost simultaneously they had told Hamilton to come in for his last stop as well as telling Alonso they would be holding him for twenty seconds. What for? McLaren claimed it was to maximise track position, but only Raikkonen and Giancarlo Fisichella were on track at the time.

But, even if McLaren had deliberately held Alonso so that Hamilton would have barely enough time to start his flyer, it was the fact that Alonso did not move once the lollipop had lifted that ultimately cost Lewis his flying lap altogether. Here the details got really hazy. At first, before the world's press, McLaren and Alonso claimed that Fernando's countdown was still in progress when the lollipop man prematurely lifted and signalled for the Spaniard to depart. Then, before the stewards, the story was changed.

Now the additional delay was because Alonso was surprised that he had been given a new set of scrubbed tyres, rather than fresh rubber. Why had he not asked about it during the earlier 20s hold? Because the radio was jammed during the countdown, he said - which was patently untrue. The final version was that he did not know until the tyre covers came off. Except that at this last tyre change, there were no tyre warmers on the new set of tyres that were put on.

Guilty as sin, Alonso looked, and in the FIA's finest traditions of ruling the sport with an iron fist, the stewards intervened. Here, the only thing they got right was that a block in the pits is little different to a block on the track, and could warrant sanctions. But demoting Alonso to 6th on the grid was ludicrous on numerous fronts. There was no evidence that Hamilton would have beaten Alonso's pole time for starters, but at most disregarding Alonso's last time would have sufficed.

On previous occasions, a driver's three best times have been voided for a blocking infringement, but here it seemed as though Fernando was arbitrarily dropped to 6th. Given the nature of the Hungaroring, where overtaking is a pipe dream, and the disadvantage of an even-numbered grid position, given the infamous dirty side of the grid, demoting Alonso to 6th whilst promoting Hamilton to the pole was akin to handing the race win to Lewis on the plate.

This was the stuff of schoolboys before a detention-happy headmaster. Worst of all, McLaren and Alonso were penalised for something which, at its roots, was Hamilton's fault! This is not to suggest that two (or three!) wrongs make a right, and if Alonso was employing gamesmanship then we do not condone that, but overall things had balanced themselves out without the stewards intervening. The McLarens were on the front row, and Alonso was on pole as he would have been had their fuel burn strategy gone to plan.

The stewards' blind failure to see the common sense in this, and their need to intervene with harsh and arbitrary penalties, was disturbing. They were not entitled to punish Alonso's wrong without having regard to Hamilton's initial wrong, which itself could have cost Alonso pole. Why should Alonso's wrong have been within their jurisdiction, and Hamilton's not so? And even if they had to only punish Alonso, dropping him to 2nd was enough, let alone demoting him to 6th and punishing the team as well.

For this ham-fisted heavy-handedness, we give the stewards of the meet the 'Reject of the Race' award. Also for the fact that their intervention may have a critical impact on the championship. Hamilton has had things easy this year, but all the stewards did were succeed in making life even easier for him. Instead of starting 2nd to Alonso's pole, he got to start from pole with Alonso stuck in 6th! No Hamilton title victory can be allowed to go down in the history books without reference to this helping hand from the stewards.

In this writer's eyes, Hamilton's own reputation took a massive beating - seemingly within his own team as well as from the outside world. His childish, almost-in-tears indignation over the radio at the end of qualifying as well as in the immediate post-qualifying interviews, where he even started to sarcastically mock Alonso as if in complete disregard for his role in triggering the whole episode, reeked of a spoilt child who has been too used to having it his own way.

REJECT OF THE RACE
The Hungary Stewards
Whatever the truth - the punishment didn't fit the crime

At the start of the year, Hamilton endeared himself to everyone, partly for his speed, partly for his 'living the dream' humility and fresh-faced innocence. But, especially from Monaco onwards, we have gradually seen another side of Lewis, one that led to his blatant gesture at the commencement of Q3. Suddenly, all those well-crafted cliches in press conferences seem more like cringe-worthy PR-speak, hiding a selfish ambitious streak that lurks not that far beneath.

None of this is to absolve Alonso if he did indeed make a conscious decision to delay Hamilton. In any sport, it is bad to be fouled, but worse to retaliate. Fernando has a rather unfortunate habit of losing his cool when he gets riled, and his battle with Hamilton is now open warfare. In future, could Lewis' failure to stick to an agreement be viewed in the same light as Ayrton Senna's breaking of a no-passing pact with Alain Prost at the 1989 San Marino GP, that led to the hostility between them?

Fernando had a poor opening lap, recovered by passing Mark Webber and Robert Kubica down into turn 1, but then got stuck behind Ralf Schumacher's Toyota which he never came close to passing on the track. By the time he cleared the German at their second stops, Nick Heidfeld on a three-stop plan had pulled out a full pit-stop's gap over him, and 3rd and 4th places were decided. Still, the 7 point gap to Hamilton is not unassailable, especially given Alonso's current form overall which is actually quite strong.

Win or lose the title though, speculation is now also rife that Fernando may leave McLaren at year's end, although what options he has are less clear. Dennis couldn't control Prost and Senna, nor could he bring the best out of Raikkonen and Juan-Pablo Montoya; he's tried to be scrupulously fair to Hamilton and Alonso, whereas both would rather have preferential treatment. Alonso may yet be looking for a new home where he will get just that. Perhaps Michael Schumacher isn't the only selfish one after all ...

Felipe Massa, meanwhile, was in all sorts, despite having built up a points buffer over his team-mate at the Nurburgring. A comedy of errors in Q2 saw the Brazilian need a second run in his ill-handling car, which threw his crew so much they sent him out without refuelling him, forcing them to pull his car back along pit lane, by which time the tyre pressures had gone down by the time Massa got back on track. From 14th on the grid his race was all but destroyed, and his 'half three-quarter' tactic paid no dividends.

Felipe never got near the top ten in the race, and once again the role of lead Ferrari driver in the championship switched hands. That has happened too often recently, to the point where Kimi and Felipe are 20 and 21 points adrift of Hamilton respectively, and Ferrari needs one of them to win virtually all of the last six races with the other regularly coming 2nd. That is more than hugely unlikely. Ferrari's unreliability compared to McLaren in 2007 has cost them dearly, and they might as well start looking to 2008.

BMW were solid without race-winning pace yet again. Even on a lighter fuel load Heidfeld could not challenge the front two, although his pace allowed him to stay ahead of Ralf and Alonso despite the extra stop. On the first anniversary of his race debut, Kubica was generally outpaced by Heidfeld as their see-sawing year continues, and with a similar strategy to his team-mate he was able to leap ahead of the Toyota and McLaren at the first stop, but only stay ahead of Schumacher as his extra fuel stop unfolded.

It's amazing what contract negotiations have done for Ralf's form. His turnaround since Silverstone has been suitably impressive. Here, he out-qualified team-mate Jarno Trulli, started a fine 5th, held off Alonso whilst Trulli dropped back early and never recovered, and claimed three valuable points for 6th place that helped claw back some of the seven-point gap that Red Bull had pulled out after the Nurburgring. With 5 points to Trulli's 7, suddenly their seasons are starting to look comparable - comparably inconsistent, sadly.

The extra stop also cost Webber a point against the impressive Kovalainen, who was fast throughout the weekend only to drop the ball in qualifying, but on super-softs and low fuel in middle stages of the race, his speed caught the eye. As for Trulli, DC and Fisi, their positions were determined directly by the order that each made their second and final stops: Fisichella on lap 41, Coulthard on lap 43, and Trulli on lap 51. He who pits last has the advantage, as usual.

In fact, Fisi's weekend was undistinguished all round. He arrogantly blocked Sakon Yamamoto during Q1 for which he was penalised (although dropping him to 13th again seemed all too arbitrary). A lazy moment coming out from his second stop led to some wheel-banging that put Anthony Davidson out of the race, and to top it off, again he was out-driven by Kovalainen as he has been since Indy. What value is he bringing to Renault at the moment exactly? No wonder they're in no hurry to re-sign him for 2008.

Super Aguri had the pace to defeat the Toro Rossos, Spykers and Hondas, but it was not enough to keep Takuma Sato or Davidson in the midfield battle, especially when Sato was on a three-stop strategy. Having said that, he spent the first 31 laps of the race running ahead of Massa's Ferrari after a demon opening lap. Davidson was also as high as 11th before his first stop. But all in all, it shows how quickly things progress when the Super Aguri is basically the car that won this race twelve months ago ...

Sebastian Vettel replaced Scott Speed at Toro Rosso for the rest of 2007 as well as for 2008, and indeed the all-Seb dream-team for 2008 has been confirmed with Sebastien Bourdais to make the jump from Champ Cars. There was no pressure on Vettel at the Hungaroring, the young German having never sat in the car before the weekend, but frankly he did not impress, with two offs in Q1 leaving him at the back and scuppering his weekend.

Adrian Sutil raced strongly for Spyker to beat Barrichello home, but in the other orange car Yamamoto proved that money still talks loudly in F1 as he displaced Nurburgring hero and one-race-wonder Markus Winkelhock. True, like Vettel the Japanese driver had not sat in his new mount before the weekend began, but his inability to come to grips with it, and perhaps his overall ability, somehow means less to the team than the 'experience' that supposedly justified his signing (not to mention the yen he offered!).

And then there was Honda. Oh. Dear. Could it get any worse? This was the team that won last year's Hungarian GP, after which Honda declared that the next logical step was a championship challenge. Here they were in 2007, coming last in the form of Barrichello being beaten home by Sutil's Spyker to the tune of four seconds, with Jenson Button hardly doing much better, and neither car coming within shouting distance of last year's car. And somehow technical director Shuhei Nakamoto's position is not at risk?!?

Don't forget their mid-season upgrade was meant to get them not only into the midfield, but into regular points-scoring contention. On current form that seems as far away as ever, and Honda is another team that might as well start looking to next season already, and resign themselves to scoring one solitary point in 2007 as well as being beaten by Super Aguri! They're just lucky that all the controversy and intrigue at the front of the field has diverted some of the cold probing spotlight away from them!