Lewis Hamilton scored his and the McLaren’s team first victory of the season after a strong drive in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen finished in a fine second – a poignant result with the Finn’s team-mate Felipe Massa still in an induced coma in a Budapest hospital – with Mark Webber continuing his impressive run of form with third for Red Bull Racing.
This victory is a rich reward for the world champion after a trying and difficult season so far. The improvements at the previous race at the Nurburgring, in particular the double diffuser and front wing, has given Lewis the extra confidence to drive the Mercedes-powered car at the Hungaroring more quickly. Instead of wrestling with the car’s imbalance the aero upgrades has transformed the MP4-24 and this result has been justified by an on-form Hamilton.
As for championship leader Jenson Button, this was a damage limitation race. The Brawn GP driver struggled with grip throughout the 70-lap Grand Prix and to finish seventh (and taking only two points) wasn’t ideal, but Jenson still leads the drivers’ standings as Formula One heads into a four-week summer break.
Pole-sitter Fernando Alonso was one of the major runners to retire after a right-front wheel came loose following a pit-stop. The wheel completely detached itself from the Renault and the Spaniard had to nurse it back to the pits. Consequently the damage to the R29 eventually forced him to park it in the garage.
What about Sebastian Vettel, who had the opportunity to reduce the points gap to Jenson Button in the championship? Well, the Red Bull Racing driver was forced to pull out from the Hungarian Grand Prix with suspension damage, due to a brush with Kimi Raikkonen. The incident at the first corner on the opening lap will be investigated by the stewards after the race.
The Williams of Nico Rosberg finished in a solid fourth ahead of Heikki Kovalainen’s McLaren and Timo Glock’s Toyota. The latter’s performance in the TF109 was equally impressive when you consider Glock started the race down in 14th position.
Button never had the pace to get near the top five and with Mark Webber finishing on the podium, the Australian is now Jenson’s nearest championship contender with 18.5 points.
Jarno Trulli took the final championship point for Toyota after fending off Kazuki Nakajima’s Williams and Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn in the final stages of the race.
As for Formula One rookie Jaime Alguersuari, the Spaniard stayed out of trouble and recorded a 15th placed finish. Despite the result, he should take satisfaction in beating his Toro Rosso team-mate Sebastien Buemi after the Swiss driver lost time with a mid-race spin at Turn 2.
Hamilton’s victory at the Hungaroring showcases the remarkable turnaround in McLaren’s fortunes and it ends his miserable run of non-results as the defending champion. In addition, this is the first time a KERS car has won a race and it was the Briton’s second Hungarian Grand Prix win.
Race results from the Hungaroring, 70 laps:
1. Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1h38:23.876
2. Raikkonen Ferrari +11.529
3. Webber Red Bull-Renault +16.886
4. Rosberg Williams-Toyota +26.967
5. Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes +34.392
6. Glock Toyota +35.237
7. Button Brawn-Mercedes +55.088
8. Trulli Toyota +1:08.172
9. Nakajima Williams-Toyota +1:08.774
10. Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes +1:09.256
11. Heidfeld BMW Sauber +1:10.612
12. Piquet Renault +1:11.512
13. Kubica BMW Sauber +1:14.046
14. Fisichella Force India-Mercedes +1 lap
15. Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari +1 lap
16. Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari +1 lap
Fastest lap: Webber, 1:21.931
Not classified/retirements:
Vettel Red Bull-Renault 30 laps
Alonso Renault 16 laps
Sutil Force India-Mercedes 2 laps
Massa Ferrari Did Not Start
World Championship standings, round 10:
Drivers:
1. Button 70
2. Webber 51.5
3. Vettel 47
4. Barrichello 44
5. Rosberg 25.5
6. Trulli 22.5
7. Massa 22
8. Hamilton 19
9. Raikkonen 18
10. Glock 16
11. Alonso 13
12. Kovalainen 9
13. Heidfeld 6
14. Buemi 3
15. Bourdais 2
16. Kubica 2
Constructors:
1. Brawn-Mercedes 114
2. Red Bull-Renault 98.5
3. Ferrari 40
4. Toyota 38.5
5. McLaren-Mercedes 28
6. Williams-Toyota 25.5
7. Renault 13
8. BMW Sauber 8
9. Toro Rosso-Ferrari 5
Next race: European Grand Prix, Valencia. August 21-23
Lets hear what the top three drivers had to say after the Hungarian Grand Prix. Courtesy from Autosport.com:
Lewis Hamilton said it was an incredible feeling to return to winning ways after a commanding first victory of 2009 at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Briton had scored just nine points up the Hungarian race this year, and he had not scored a race win since last year’s Chinese Grand Prix.
But Hamilton completed McLaren’s recovery in perfect fashion on Sunday, dominating the race at the Hungaroring circuit.
After such a difficult first half of the year, McLaren driver Hamilton was ecstatic with his team’s turnaround in form.
“It is an incredible feeling to be back here after all,” said Hamilton. “It feels such a long time away, such a struggle with me and the team but as I said on the in-lap I am so proud of the guys.
“I go to the factory and see how hard everyone pushing, they never gave up and it is something very rare to see in a large group of people.
“We didn’t expect to win this weekend. It bit didn’t feel we had pace to win but the car felt fantastic. It’s incredibly special to be back up here, not just on the podium but just to get this win.
“The car was fantastic. The team asked me to look after tyres, and through experience I was able to do that, so thanks to the guys and fans, and my family.”
Hamilton said, however, that McLaren must continue to push with the development of the car in order to win regularly.
“We have to take as much as we can from this weekend,” he added. “We need to continue to push, it doesn’t mean we can start slowing down.
“We will keep pushing, we have improvements to make and work to do to beat these guys on a regular basis. It’s one huge leap for us, let’s keep going.”
The McLaren driver, who gave a KERS-equipped car its first win a Formula 1 race, also remembered Ferrari driver Felipe Massa, who missed today’s race after his terrible crash on Saturday.
“I want to say yesterday was for all us drivers quite a sad day to see Felipe not here today and I speak on behalf of us all, we miss him and wish him a quick recovery.”
Kimi Raikkonen said he knew before the Hungarian Grand Prix that a fast start was his best chance of getting into the podium fight.
The Ferrari driver had only qualified seventh, but burst through the pack with his KERS boost at the start and was fourth in the first stint.
With Fernando Alonso dropping out after losing his wheel, and Mark Webber slightly delayed at his pitstop, Raikkonen then found himself second behind Lewis Hamilton.
“We got a very good start and that definitely helped,” said Raikkonen “We knew before the race that we had to gain some places at the start to be able to fight for the podium.
“I was fourth after the first few corners behind Lewis and he overtook Mark. I could follow Mark and got him at first pitstop, he had some issues and I got past him. After that I was just driving my own race.”
Raikkonen admitted that Hamilton was too fast to challenge once he was up to second.
“I tried to catch up, I thought I had the speed for that, but then we were at the same speed and he was faster so the gap stayed more or less then same, then I had some issues at last stop which didn’t help,” said Raikkonen.
“It’s difficult to challenge for the win right now, but we were more close than we expected.”
He added that the result was particularly pleasing given the traumatic time Ferrari had suffered following Felipe Massa’s horrific qualifying crash.
“It’s not an easy weekend for team but we got a good result so hopefully we can keep going like this,” Raikkonen said. “It’s positive for the team.”
The Finn will be investigated by the stewards after the race for his startline move, as he made contact with Sebastian Vettel – causing damage that eventually forced the Red Bull to retire – when squeezing through the slower-moving non-KERS cars.
But Raikkonen was bemused to learn of the investigation and felt he had done nothing wrong.
“I haven’t even noticed if I touched anybody,” he said. “I was between Mark and somebody else. I don’t know what is going on. I didn’t feel any touching so I cannot comment.”
Mark Webber admitted he was surprised by the result of the Hungarian Grand Prix after being unable to fight for victory.
The Red Bull driver had to settle for third place in a race dominated by McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, who finished ahead of Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen as KERS-equipped cars enjoyed a one-two.
Despite setting the fastest lap of the race, German GP winner Webber finished 16 seconds behind Hamilton.
The Australian was nonetheless happy with the result, having moved into second place in the championship standings.
“A little bit of a surprise,” said Webber about the result. “We expected to be a bit quicker after our running on Friday but we knew these guys would be around us. We knew we did not have advantage of last few races.
“I’m happy to get the result we did. I could have had a better chance to fight Kimi and do different tyres, but that was my call, but overall we still have lot of positives. We are still up here, we can take our car to a lot of venues and fight and we are still very much a force.”
Although championship rival Jenson Button struggled again during the race, Webber says it’s still too early to think about the drivers’ title.
“I think still it’s a bit early,” he said. “We can still fight the Brawns together with Sebastian and I. It’s been a bit of a blip for them in the last few races and we hope it continues and we can take some points out of them.
“Seb had a poor weekend and lost some points, but he will back and after the break and we can recharge.”
Button, seventh today, is now 18.5 points ahead of Webber.
What about Sebastian Vettel, who was a close championship contender to Jenson Button? Well, the Red Bull Racing driver was forced to retire after making contact with Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari and the German blamed the Finn for the non-finish. Read on for details – taken from Autosport.com:
World championship contender Sebastian Vettel blamed Kimi Raikkonen for his own retirement in Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Red Bull Racing driver, who has won twice so far this season, retired from the race on lap 32 with front suspension damage after making contact with the Ferrari driver at the start.
“I had a collision,” Vettel told the BBC. “I made contact in first corner with Kimi. I was on the inside, had a clean run to accelerate and then his car came sideways and yeah, we touched. He crashed into my car, so…
“It can happen, but in the end I mean it was the reason why the first pitstop already was bad. And then at some point the front left suspension gave up and we had to retire the car.”
Vettel started as one of the favourites for victory in Budapest but instead lost ground to Jenson Button in the title battle and also dropped behind his team-mate Mark Webber in the points. The Australian was beaten in to third position in the race by the KERS-equipped Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen.
Vettel admitted that he had been surprised by the pace of the McLaren in particular, but added that having KERS at the start was an advantage and caused extra complications in to Turn 1.
“Well race pace definitely,” when asked about the Mclaren’s speed. “Qualifying I think it was, you know, I think we knew that here it would be a little bit closer, but unfortunately you know at the start there is nothing you can do when pushing your foot down.
“We do have a button as well on the steering wheel but nothing happens if we press it, so for sure it’s a shame, and we go into turn one and you have five, six cars, you know, next to each other instead of three or four so it’s a different situation.”
As for the series leader, this was a difficult race for Jenson Button. The 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix will be remembered as a tyre management race and the Briton admits we have to do something to resolve the tyre wear issue. More can be read in the Autosport.com story below:
Jenson Button says that Brawn has to stop blaming cool temperatures and start looking at other causes for the team’s recent loss of pace.
The world championship leader, who holds an 18.5-point advantage over Mark Webber going into the summer break, says he is mystified as to why his Brawn GP car is not performing to the same level it was when he dominated the start of the season.
“I don’t know what it is but I don’t think we can blame the weather,” he told the BBC. “It is a bit colder today than it was Friday but we have got to be looking in other areas than that.”
Button called upon his team to urgently solve the problems that caused his rear tyres to grain so badly in the Hungarian Grand Prix, where he finished a distant sixth.
“We have had two different updates on the car but they shouldn’t unbalance the car in any way,” Button said. “You can say that the other teams have improved their cars for sure. The Red Bull is a lot quicker and obviously McLaren, Ferrari and Williams have stepped up their game. But our car is not what it was to drive a few races ago.
“It’s not that we’ve got the same paced car and everyone has overtaken us. Our car is not driving as it has done from the start of the season so there is obviously an issue, but the good thing is there is a break before the next race for us to try and solve it.”
The Briton admitted that his race had been one of damage limitation as it quickly became clear that he did not have the pace to fight for victory.
“It was damage limitation in the end but it wasn’t supposed to be,” he said. “Friday our pace was good on the option tyre. Everybody else was struggling with rear graining and we had a very good rear end. We didn’t grain at all like normally we do on the rear tyres.
“Today my tyres were destroyed after four laps, my tyres were destroyed and I couldn’t stay with the cars in front.
“Obviously the plan was stay closer to the cars in front and when they pitted I could go a lot longer but I don’t know why we grained the rear tyres today.”
Even team boss Ross Brawn is mystified by tyre problems at the end of a disappointing performance at the Hungaroring.
Ross Brawn says his team must ‘work back and understand its problems’ after Jenson Button could only finish in a distant seventh place in the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Brawn admitted that the BGP 001 was not only graining its tyres but performing ‘differently’ to three races ago when Button was dominant in Turkey.
“This is a problem we have got to try and solve because again we struggled with tyre temperatures and graining in the race,” Brawn told the BBC. “There were a couple of points where we had the tyres on, we pushed hard and the laptimes started to come, but we just can’t do them consistently at the moment.
“It’s completely different to how it was at the beginning of the season.
“We have got to unravel perhaps what we have done in the last couple of races and understand if we have done something that has exacerbated the problem. Jenson was complaining about his tyres in the race again and it is very frustrating.
“We got away lightly today because obviously Sebastian [Vettel] didn’t finish and Mark [Webber] was third so we’ve lost a bit of ground but not catastrophic so… Nice challenge that.”
Asked if he thought the problems were related to the two updates the car has received so far this season, Brawn replied: “It seems to have changed from where we were three or four races ago. Monaco we didn’t have a tyre problem, Turkey we didn’t have a tyre problem. We have now had three races where we are really struggling to get the tyres to work.
“Obviously other teams have gone forward and your comparisons change but we are getting problems that we never saw in the early races,” he added. “But we have graining problems and other issues and we have got to work back and understand the problems.”
Nico Rosberg was happy with his fourth place at the Hungarian Grand Prix, something that allowed the Williams driver to move into fifth in the championship standings.
“I am quite pleased with the outcome today as it was quite tricky, especially at the start against the KERS cars,” said Rosberg after the race.
“Initially I had no chance off the line, but the first corner was quite a big mess and I managed to profit from this and climb back to fifth place, which was important.
“As the race settled down, I had to manage the tyres cautiously because of graining in both the first and second stint. Given all of these issues, we have to be very happy with fourth place and I am now up to fifth in the championship, although of course this was in part due to the fact that Felipe wasn’t able to start today.
“Anyway, I am enjoying working with the team and everyone is pushing on really well, so we’ll continue to improve if we keep moving in this direction.”
Team-mate Kazuki Nakajima was unable to score his first points of the season after he was passed by Jenson Button early on.
The Japanese finished in ninth, the same place where he had started from.
“After the first lap when I got past Jenson, I couldn’t hold the position and once he had got back past me, it dictated my race,” said Nakajima. “It was a big moment for me and made it very difficult to improve for the rest of the day despite good car pace as I was running in traffic.
“We just need to keep pushing and one race soon we are going to get the result.”
Source: Autosport.com
LATEST NEWS: Renault has been suspended from the European Grand Prix for the events that led to a wheel coming off Fernando Alonso’s car in Hungary today.
Following a post-race discussion with the stewards, it was deemed that the team had breached the regulations enough for it to be suspended from the next event.
It means Alonso will miss his home event that takes place in Valencia next month, unless he moves to another team.
Alonso had been leading the race up until his stop, but his efforts came to nothing after his right front wheel was not fitted properly. It worked its way loose and flew off the car later that lap, ending up against the crash barriers.
A statement issued by the stewards on Sunday night said that there had been multiple breaches of the regulations by the Renault team.
Stewards talked to Renault representatives twice after the race.
The statement said that Renault “knowingly released car no. 7 from the pitstop position without one of the retaining devices for the wheel-nuts being securely in position, this being an indication that the wheel itself may not have been properly secured.”
It added that Renault, “being aware of this, failed to take any action to prevent the car from leaving the pitlane….failed to inform the driver of this problem or to advise him to take appropriate action given the circumstances, even though the driver contacted the team by radio believing he had a puncture.”
It said that the team’s actions had compromised safety in breach of Article 3.2 of the Sporting Regulations, and in breach of Article 23.1.i had released the car from the pits before it was safe to do so.
Renault has been reminded of its right to appeal the decision.
Renault has confirmed that it will appeal the FIA’s decision to ban the team from the European Grand Prix for the events that led to a wheel coming off Fernando Alonso’s car in Hungary.
The team lodged its paperwork and a deposit for the 6000 Euros fee for the appeal, with a hearing now likely take place in the summer break before the European GP on August 23.
The paperwork, lodged in conjunction with the French motorsport federation, was signed by Renault’s team manager Steve Nielsen and was received by the FIA’s stewards’ chairman Alan Donnelly shortly before 7pm.
Source: Autosport.com
This really shows the lack of consistency from the race stewards. With Renault banned from the next event following Alonso’s wheel loss, the incident involving Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen resulted in no penalty. Read on for details, taken from Autosport.com:
Hungarian Grand Prix stewards have decided that no action was needed following the investigation of an incident involving Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen at the start of the race.
Raikkonen was under investigation over his driving at the first corner after making contact with Red Bull rival Sebastian Vettel.
The Finn, who finished in second place, escaped a penalty, however, as the stewards deemed it was just a racing incident.
Meanwhile, the Red Bull Racing team got a reprimand for the unsafe release of Mark Webber during a pitstop, when he came close to making contact with Raikkonen.
It was the second race in a row that Red Bull has been in a similar situation, having been fined and reprimanded for the unsafe release of Sebastian Vettel at the German Grand Prix two weeks ago.