Report cards of the Hungarian Grand Prix

Five years after his first victory in F1, on the same track, Jenson Button confirmed himself to be infallible in the event of intermittent rain and in complicated conditions to say the least, he took home his second victory of the season. Behind him Vettel, who consolidated his lead in the World Championship, and Alonso, author of a vigorous but at times imprecise race. Hamilton was only fourth, making mistakes both on the track and in the pits. Enjoy the reading!

Sebastian Vettel: 8,5st – Ultimately he deserves a big vote. A big vote because his world leadership emerges strengthened by the Hungarian event even though his race is far from perfect. He starts well from pole but then under pressure - again!!! - he makes a mistake that costs him the lead from Hamilton. He also suffers overtaking from Button - on the track - and Alonso - in the pits - but he does well to regain the position from the Spaniard with a peremptory manoeuvre. When it rains again he makes two off-track excursions which only waste time but don't ruin the car, and so by hook and by crook - but not even much - he brings home a second place which is worth more than gold in world championship terms. Of course he has to thank the wall that got the strategy right, but it's also possible that the choice to stay out was his. After all, in the early stages of the race his engineer had told him «you have to be the one to tell us when you want to return», so… He explains that he could have won, but beyond what could have been what has already been a lot. And sorry for the convoluted reasoning. He says that the other teams are strong because they copy his Red Bull. Apart from the fact that he didn't draw it, as far as we know, all in all he would have made a better impression by keeping quiet. Chatty

Mark Webber: 5 – Ranking in hand, Vettel's most serious rival for the title is the Australian. All in all Seb can sleep soundly. Because beyond the wrong tire choice - at the end of the race he defined it as stupid - what was lacking was both consistency and speed. In qualifying he gets six tenths behind Vettel, in the race he doesn't sting. He loses two positions at the start, passes Alonso on the track but finds him back in front after the round of pit stops. So the big deal about the additional double stop for the intermediates, Massa passes - who knows what credit he deserves - but he has to give in to Hamilton, as too often happens to him lately. In short, a fifth place that is neither fowl nor fowl. Nor especially useful. He elegantly takes responsibility for the choice of tyres, but this doesn't save him a bad rating. And recovering almost 100 points from a teammate who is faster than you seems frankly impossible to us, at least given the current conditions. Plucked.

Lewis Hamilton: 7 – We already imagine - even before publishing the votes - that we will be bitten in the throat by some of the readers. But we also like to think that a part, perhaps a small one, criticizes the vote considering it too low. Because when a driver puts on a show, literally, entertains, makes you jump on the sofa, well then he deserves affection and - consequently - an evaluation even beyond the mistakes and above the result. And this is - in a nutshell - Lewis' race. He holds second place at the start, overtakes Vettel and goes away at a much higher pace. So he holds the position until he makes a mistake which will then be the -partial- cause of all evil. He ends up off the track and, when setting off again, performs a half-spin deemed dangerous by the stewards, who impose a fine on him. drive through. Previously, a simply fantastic duel with teammate Button, the first drops of rain, the decision to try the intermediates and the further stop to remount the slicks. He returns to fifth place and with a malice that only he currently possesses, he passes Webber back up to fourth place. He pays heavily for mistakes on the track and for strategic ones, but he has demonstrated once again - again in our opinion, let it be clear - that he is the best on the ball in the lineup, the one with the greatest propensity for risk and the one with the most developed sense of overtaking. He made us have fun. We don't feel like rejecting it, on the contrary. And sorry if we allow ourselves a personal judgement. Extremist.

Jenson Button: 9,5nd - Mum is always mum. Children know compassion and heart. Mid-seasons no longer exist. But when they arrive JB always wins. Keep these four clichés in mind. And let us know which one you think is most true. We've run out of adjectives by now. And we're seriously thinking about stopping looking for them. He himself declares «For some reason I like these conditions, don't ask me why, but it still worked». If he doesn't know it, why should we? And in any case it is not just a question of strategy, intuition, intuition, or - some will think - luck. First because if things always go in a certain way there is no point in talking about randomness. Secondly because you can't overtake Vettel and fight with your teammate if you don't have any attributes. More than just watching the race. It takes balls. And he, by God, is proving he has some. He is taking away all his great satisfaction, he is certainly very far behind in the championship, but it's not even entirely his fault - read the last two retirements due to mechanical failures. He doesn't have a killer's instinct in qualifying but he very rarely makes mistakes. And in the end he also serves this. He triumphs on the circuit where he achieved the first victory of his career, in similar conditions. Today he has 200 GPs under his belt - by the way, a heartfelt thanks to Gianfranco Mazzoni for reminding us about 214 times - and a world title in his pocket. And to think that a gentleman with white hair and an exaggerated tan one day called him Paracarro. Who knows what happened to him. The tanned gentleman, we mean. Half a vote less only for the blunder that made him lose the position to Hamilton halfway through the race. Sherlock Holmes.

Fernando Alonso: 7,5th – Good but not very good. Excellent but not great. Splendid but not brilliant, to put it in the Rector's words. We wrote this a week ago. And we are forced to repeat this. In the sense that this time too the race is positive, but full of mistakes, inaccuracies, mistakes - not even hidden, to be honest - which affect the final result. Starting from a start - excuse the pun - which sends him behind the two Mercedes. Okay, he gets rid of it easily, but a mistake puts him behind Rosberg and he has to do almost everything all over again. At the end of the race - if we're not mistaken - there will be three spins, in complete solitude. A little too much, even in a race with grip yet to be discovered and at the limit. He is passed by both Red Bulls on the track, he makes up for it by overtaking Hamilton but finishes behind him due to the last excursion to the edge of the track. And thank goodness for his drive through gives him a place on the podium again. All things considered, he is the driver who has collected the most in the last four races, so credit where credit is due for this, of course. But with a little more attention the Hungarian third place could have been at least a second. Of course, it's easy to talk with ifs and buts, and if you go to the limit it's easy to make mistakes. But three errors frankly seem too many to us. Inaccurate.

Felipe Massa: 5 – What better way to nullify the best qualifying of the season than a start that sends you three positions behind and a spin that sends you crashing into the barriers, damaging the rear wing? Ah, when you say the meaning of the circumstance! Starting with a handicap can perhaps work in video games, perhaps in golf, but not in real F1. He jumped in front of Alonso thanks to his mistake but got back behind him almost immediately. He remains bottled up behind Michael Schumacher for several laps, losing a lot of time, then passes him to the pits and begins a series of overtakings - Kobayashi, Alguersuari - which are certainly not epic. At the end of the day he found himself fourth but had to give in to the return of first Webber and then Hamilton, settling for sixth place. Last of the drivers of the three top teams. As happens a little too often. Okay, there won't be equal treatment at Ferrari. But it is also true that by racing like this it becomes difficult to take points away from your opponents. He really doesn't like these races, but he gets more than a minute from Alonso, since he speaks for himself. Clearly useless.

Michael Schumacher: sv – There is nothing to be done, the approach is still the same as almost twenty years ago. At the start he finds the right opening, passes the Ferraris and even tries with Rosberg, almost colliding. In the chaos of the pit stops he retastes the momentary joy of leadership, resists Hamilton for a lap and Massa for several laps, before the Brazilian overtakes him in the pits. Then a strange half-spin and the subsequent retirement due to gearbox problems independent - it seems - from the pirouette performed on the track. We were talking about the attitude: the determination is unchanged, the speed is not really known to us - even if we are not at the Lumacher level that many ungenerous Solons would like to attribute to him - the temperament is perhaps even more decisive. Nice to see him struggling to resist cars clearly faster than his Mercedes GP. He would have to teach many kids about it. We prefer not to rate it, but we liked it. You choose the vote. Free.

Nico Rosberg: 6th – If the races lasted half as long, Mercedes would be fighting for the world championship. Almost. Forgive the humble report card writer, certainly incompetent, certainly slow, narrow-minded, whatever you want. But the undersigned, despite damning his soul, just can't understand why every time there is something that, from mid-race onwards, sends the Silver Arrows to the back of the group or almost. This time they are, in tandem, the excessive degradation of the tires and the risky strategy with the intermediates. He gets off to a spectacular start, is overtaken by Alonso - twice - and Massa, then finds himself behind and tries to recover by overtaking Kobayashi and Sutil and grabbing the points zone behind Buemi and Di Resta. Again everything is logical. The Mercedes drivers tell you about their race in a fatalistic way, as if it were inevitable that they would have to lose ground at a certain point. An almost Zen, circular vision, in which everything leads to retreat. One would almost ask him who makes him do it, given these premises. But perhaps the hope - which, as the clichés so dear to every self-respecting scribbler teach us, is the last to die - is that one day things will change. Hats off to such faith. Integralist.

Nick Heidfeld: sv - FIRE AND FLAMES! FIRE AND FLAMES! FIRE AND FLAMES! This is the battle cry of the Top Dollar boss gang in cult movie The Raven. To avoid any misunderstanding, none of this. We just liked to give an epic tone to a scene that hadn't been seen in F1 for years, a fire complete with an explosion. Of the rest of his race, there are only two things to remember. The fire and the attempt to overtake Kovalainen, which failed miserably with a sumptuous array of other cars overtaking him. Reject it or ignore it and remember the fireworks from his Renault? We have a soft spot for those who, like us, are over thirty. And we prefer the second choice. Of course, ending up roasted in a wet race... Smoked.

Vitaly Petrov: 5 – Contrary to usual, he is the author of an overall anonymous competition. Which shows that he still has something to learn about slow, technical circuits that require experience. And to think that he didn't even qualify badly. But then he is not the author of the usual rocket start, he remains bottled up in the middle of the group, and is only included when he is the author of an overtaking-counter-overtaking with Buemi. He travels steadily on the edge of the points until the rain arrives. With the damp track he was the author of a slight off-piste which forced him to return to the pits to mount the intermediate tires. A gamble which obviously did not produce any positive effects for him either, so much so that in the end he had to settle for an anonymous twelfth place. At least he gets the car to the finish line, but perhaps he would have been right to expect more, even in difficult conditions. The stuff is there, he just needs to accumulate some more experience. Scammed.

Rubens Barrichello: 5,5 – «When it started to rain, I saw a great opportunity for us». He speaks like an enlightened prophet. Of those who have seen the Light. But instead of light the good Rubens only glimpsed a quantity of rain - alas - significantly higher than the real one. And that he badly deceived him. To the point of making the decision to fit wet tyres, when the track wasn't actually wet. Previously he had attracted attention for an overtaking-counter-overtaking maneuver with Kobayashi and for a fight - which only existed, in our opinion, for the state TV commentators - with his teammate Maldonado. At regular intervals the echoes of battle rang out. «Maldonado passed Barrichello», «Barrichello overtook Maldonado», «The two Williams fighting». But who knows why, really. He finishes 13th. A number that is all a program, among other things. Phantasmagoric #1.

Pastor Maldonado: 5 – What was said for Barrichello applies. In the sense that he too, convinced that he had seen the light, mounted intermediate tires at the end of the race only to be dashed by the little rain. And he too fights with his teammate without realizing it, for long parts of the race. Power of telekinesis, with the commentators who make him fight with the strength of his mind alone. Furthermore, unlike his more experienced teammate, he also catches a drive through for speeding in the pits, the result of his mistake. This gives him half a vote less than grandfather Rubens. You will grow, you will learn, sang the never-too-appreciated Nomads many years ago. Let's hope it's not too late, though. Phantasmagoric #2.

Adrian Sutil: 5,5 – He deserves much less than we give him, given that he finishes badly in 14th with his teammate in the top ten. But his race was ruined on the first lap by an off-piste move on the straight opposite the pit straight. And - even if the images will never remove our doubts - we suspect that he didn't do it alone, but that a Sauber, probably Perez's, touched him, sending him into a spin and - therefore - to the back of the group. From there, even in a strange match, one of the ones he likes - Monaco 2008, to name one - he has a terrible struggle to get back on top. And in the end, when it rains again, he gambles the intermediate card, which however turns out to be a bluff. Patience, it will be for the next one, even if it remains a wasted opportunity. Sufficiency, no, because it would be immoral, but little less, in the presumption of innocence. Hit [from behind…. and don't think badly].

Paul di Resta: 8 - Finally! Finally a race without hitches, accidents, bad luck, mistakes. And the Scotsman with the very Italian name shows that he really knows how to do a lot, showing off a veteran performance in complicated and critical conditions. We don't remember a mistake of his or a blunder of his. Which doesn't mean that he hasn't done any, of course, the memory of the report card writer is what he is and so is the international director. But the seventh place finish speaks for itself. he starts well and immediately gets in front of Sutil. So he easily maintains pace and position, getting the right times for the stops and at the end of the race he passes Kobayashi, in a tire crisis, for a comfortable - so to speak - seventh place finish which gives him points and a lot of optimism. Here too the fabric is there, and it shows. And when everything goes right... Now he has to repeat himself and find consistency. The rating is perhaps a little too high, but keep in mind that it is still a rookie. Welcome back.

Kamui Kobayashi: 6 – Here too it is nice to see that certain things do not change. Never. At Sauber, then BMW, then Sauber again, they have always chosen the same strategy for a good fifteen years. When things get bad, in the sense that we don't know how the race will evolve, we always choose to keep the driver out as much as possible. Long ball and pedaling, in short. And what will be will be. By the law of large numbers it must work every now and then. They already did it at the time of Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Johnny Herbert, do you remember them? And the Olympic extension of the stint is also staged at the Hungaroring, with the brave Kamui in the role of the spotless and fearless leader. But, alas, even without tires. Because the extension - it goes without saying - is ferocious, relentless. Swiss. Elastic like a block of granite. Have you run out of tires? You stay out anyway. And - as we said - what will be will be. Kamui obeys. And it's a disaster. Only once Di Resta, Buemi, Rosberg and Alguersuari passed him, the Sauber wall saw the light - again!!! - and called him back to the pits. At that point he might as well have let him finish the race on the canvases. But that's it. He finishes eleventh, on the edge of the points zone. But we really like him. Tired.

Sergio Perez: 5 – He ruins a good qualifying with a horrible first lap, where he falls to around twentieth place, perhaps touching - but we still have a doubt - even Sutil. The Mexican's comment on the pace of the race in the early stages was interesting and prosaic. “At that moment I was slower than the slowest cars.” You can't get whiter than whiter, also considering the color of his Sauber (which in German, to be honest, means clean). Style first and foremost. But the immaculate car aside, things haven't improved much going forward. He manages to pass Kovalainen but does so under yellow flags and so he also gets a drive through. In these conditions it makes no sense to even attempt the above lengthening. He finishes fourteenth, with the feeling of having thrown away much more than one opportunity. Sin. The same argument made for Di Resta applies: when everything goes well, the result arrives because the talent is there. This time - evidently - not everything went smoothly. Dash.

Sebastien Buemi: 8 – His weekend would be compromised by the previous race, when he received a grid penalty - which we continue to define as not very sensible, but it is our very personal battle against windmills - for the accident with Heidfeld. The conditions for a negative race were all there. And instead the Swiss decides that the Hungarian match must probably be the best match of his career and invents a sensational performance. He passes about ten (!!!) cars at the start, another 2-3 on the track - a good attack on Petrov, who then overtakes him - and settles into the points after a few laps. When the track dries out he loses ground, but at the pit stop he changes the load on the front end and the choice proves to be a winning one. Because when the second shower arrives Sebastien catches Kobayashi again and passes him with authority, taking eighth place. Which he will keep until the end. Comeback race, tenacious, brilliant, intelligent, gritty. Despite the handicap premises. What more? Cheered up.

Jaime Alguersuari: 6 – Less spectacular than his teammate, but up to a certain point even more consistent. Then he literally gets lost in a glass of water. First an error on the track, which makes him lose time, then the attempt to overtake Kobayashi trying to follow Buemi. Optimism is important, it helps in life, it gives confidence in oneself and in others. But in this case he is clearly out of place. And in fact he comes into contact with the Japanese and finds himself behind other cars. In the end he manages to catch up and overtake Kobayashi, but for a paltry - so to speak - tenth place. Very acceptable result, for goodness sake, but still a bit tight, especially when compared to Buemi's performance. You can give more, he sang a trio of famous artists of Italian song. Courage!

Jarno Trulli: sv – There are many ways to greet a person and say “Welcome back!” There is that of his boss, Tony Fernandes, who on the eve had said «We are happy to return to work with Jarno». And I believe you, we say, despite Chandhok's money. There is that of his engineers who make him find a new power steering built to his precise specifications and which excites him. And there's the one about his car. Which, invariably, greets him by breaking down. This time it's a water leak. Which still makes more sense than a fire, in a wet race. Jarno-Nick 1-0. It's a question of consistency. Drowned.

Heikki Kovalainen: 6 – And for the sake of consistency mentioned above, Heikki's Lotus also suffers from the same fault. And then go and tell him that there is no equal treatment between pilots. However, his race is a curious one. It is practically only framed when someone tries to pass it and invariably it ends up wide. At a certain point it became very funny. The driver approaches, activates the Kers, the DRS, comes alongside the Finn, passes him, takes the first corner, ends up wide and the Lotus returns to the front. It happened to Heidfeld, Maldonado, Perez. Halfway between a rubber wall, a voodoo ritual and a Woody Allen film. Then the aforementioned water loss forced him to retire. But we give him a thumbs up because he really made us laugh. Great.

Daniel Ricciardo: 6,5rd – Third Grand Prix in F1. After two nineteenth places comes an eighteenth. Little pilots grow up. But beyond the jokes, his match was positive. In complicated conditions, on his debut or just above, he makes no mistakes and keeps two riders behind, including teammate Liuzzi. That he had his own problems, but that he has a bit more experience. And despite this he also surpasses him in the calculation of the fastest laps. We really liked him, especially for his calm, patient but determined approach. He keeps the pace, he doesn't make mistakes, he doesn't do damage, he is correct in his dubbing. Plus he's also heavily sponsored by Red Bull. Rotation between Australians? Who knows, let's work with our imagination. But without rushing, let's let it grow. Good boy.

Vitantonio Liuzzi: 5,5 – Okay, he was leaving with a car that had been patched up as best as possible due to a lack of spare parts. And this says a lot about the climate in the team. But honestly he doesn't get one right. She gets the set-up wrong, suffering from brutal understeer. Wrong timing of pit stops, strategy, almost sends Webber off the track during a lapping, loses a piece while following Massa. In short, honestly, a disaster. While his companion grows, he struggles. This doesn't seem like the most dignified way to pull the cart. Let's hope it's not a - although understandable - crisis of motivation. Wrong

Timo Glock: 6 – For once he is the first classified in the Grand Prix reserved for drivers of new teams. Only because of Kovalainen's retirement, let's be clear. But they are still satisfying. Also because he gets a great start which puts him ahead of Heidfeld and in the wet he keeps the pace of potentially - and not only - much faster cars well. Then the dreams evaporate like water on the track dried by the sun - damn… - and little by little he returns to positions more suited to the rank of his Virgin. The second rain shower didn't fool him, he remained on dry tires and thus achieved a decent 17th place. Two laps behind those in front of him, but he does the same. In these times, demanding more would be disloyal, amoral, illegal, sadistic and even a bit bastard. Can you allow us a small personal note? We're a little sad to see him down at the bottom of the table. He's a fighter, and he could show us more fun. Amen..

Jérôme d'Ambrosio: 4,5 – The waltz around the pits, when he almost overwhelms his entire crew, is disqualification for contempt of Motorsport. He parallels Coulthard's pit entry in Melbourne in 1995, when he hit the wall and retired. We're not there, but not at all. If you don't remember, click HERE. And it's not like he previously lit up who knows how much the Hungaroring with flashes of sublime class. Of course, for him too there are all the generic mitigating circumstances - little experience, ridiculous car, difficult conditions - but there is a way and a way to complete a colorless race. He chooses the worst. To be honest, he also made us smile, that pirouette of his, we don't deny it. But for once we decide to be intransigent. Dancer.

Manuel Codignoni
www.f1grandprix.it