The final race before the mid-season break saw F1 head to Budapest for the 25th running of the Hungarian Grand Prix. Red Bull came away with a victory and the lead in both championships, despite a race of high drama…
A quarter of the grid have won here…
“What is Hungary? Hungary is all about qualifying at the front.”
Rubens Barrichello – Williams (winner in 2002 for Ferrari)
“It’s a circuit that really requires you to pull it all together… there’s nowhere to relax… you’re really hustling the car the whole way. Which, when you’ve got a good car, is great fun."
Lewis Hamilton – McLaren (winner 2007)
“If a car goes well, a lap goes well and unfortunately our car doesn’t look very good here…”
Michael Schumacher – Mercedes (winner in 1994 for Benetton, 1998, 2001, 2004 for Ferrari)
“It’s a place where you need to drive with a lot of control if you’re going to get a good laptime. Some of the kerbs are quite high, so you need a bit of precision through the high-speed stuff.”
Jenson Button – McLaren (winner in 2006 for Honda)
"The start, the first corner and the first lap is 60-70 per cent of the final result.”
Fernando Alonso – Ferrari (winner in 2003 for Renault)
“I enjoy it here. The circuit is… interesting. You don’t need to be so fast in a straight line, you just need good grip in the car.”
Heikki Kovalainen – Lotus (winner in 2008 for McLaren)
When people weren’t talking about Ferrari, they were talking about Red Bull (and Ferrari) front wings – which appear to flex in ways that upsets other teams
"We would like to understand it, because if you can do legally what they are doing, then we would like to do it."
Martin Whitmarsh – McLaren team principal
“I am happy that our car complies with all the regulations and take it (the fuss) as a compliment to our engineers.”
Christian Horner – Red Bull Racing team principal
“Our guys have broken their balls to design a car in the spirit of the regulations, and every time we are tested by the FIA, we pass [but] when people don’t like the stopwatch, they have to justify their own positions.”
Mark Webber – Red Bull Racing
Sebastian Vettel took pole as Red Bull locked out the front row, followed by the Ferraris, while McLaren were fifth and 11th.
“There wasn’t a chance for the other guys to have a crack at us today… whoever did the quickest lap out of us two was probably going to get pole.”
Mark Webber
“Congratulate Red Bull, they deserve the front row. Hopefully tomorrow we can make it a difficult race for them – so far this weekend it has been too easy.”
Fernando Alonso - Ferrari
“The start is important, as well as Turn One. But there are a couple of laps following,… I think it will be an exciting race tomorrow.”
Sebastian Vettel – Red Bull Racing
“Let’s see how the start goes… after that we’ll try to stay awake.”
Mark Webber
At the start, Fernando slipped by Mark to take second; Vettel just stayed in front and then began to disappear into the distance…
“The start was pretty much what we expected – [on the dirty side] it was always going to be damage limitation. Fernando got a good start and was straight in behind Seb and then we settled into the first stint. It was totally obvious Seb would start pulling away.”
Mark Webber
“The car did a very good start today… we nearly had the chance to overtake both Red Bulls. In the end, it was not possible but it was enough to put me second.”
Fernando Alonso
Then the safety was deployed with debris from a Force India on the track. And it all got crazy… Vettel – just – peeled into the pitlane, bumping over the curbs, followed by everybody else. Well, nearly everybody
“I had lost the radio [but] there is a light-board exiting [the penultimate corner], SC flashed up as I was already approaching the last corner. I cut the entrance a bit. It was very last minute but it was fine.”
Sebastian Vettel
A wheel flew off Rosberg’s car and caused chaos in the pitlane, eventually flattening Williams Truckie Nigel Hope. Mercedes were fined.
"After I heard that my tyre hit Big Nige, one of my old Williams truckies, I was more concerned about my tyre than him! But seriously, it's great that he doesn't have any serious injures and I'm sorry for the incident.”
Nico Rosberg – Mercedes
In the confusion Sutil and Kubica collided in the pitlane… Renault were fined.
“I was driving into my area and suddenly the Renault came out in from of me. They released him into my path… there wasn’t anything I could do.”
Adrian Sutil – Force India
Most significantly, Webber didn’t stop.
“It was pretty much the obvious thing to do having been put in that situation, but for someone like me who probably had a bit of a pace advantage we could try to do something different, so it worked out OK.”
Mark Webber
Webber led, but hadn’t stopped, behind him Vettel and Alonso had stopped. At the restart the Australian sprinted off to build up a lead. Vettel was curiously slow to follow…
“I thought the safety car would stay out [another lap] … and all of a sudden it pulled in, so I was surprised, I went onto the power. It looks like I was asleep and I totally lost out on the restart. If anything, that was already a penalty for me… Then I got the drive-through.”
Sebastian Vettel
Vettel’s drive-through penalty was for falling too far behind in the safety car queue. It promoted Alonso to second and despite being hounded by Vettel to the finish, he managed to stay in front until the chequered flag.
“I was obviously pretty angry and had to finish the race (driving) 30 laps behind Fernando. We were clearly faster but there was no way to get past. When you run too close your tyres start to lose the grip. We also knew that we weren’t quick enough on the straights.”
Sebastian Vettel
“I think it was a little bit easier [to defend], because it’s impossible to overtake on this track. It’s like in Monaco. You can drive whatever speed you want and you will more or less maintain position… [but] I felt like a backmarker! If they had that speed advantage at Spa for example, I’d only be able to defend for two or three laps.”
Fernando Alonso
Webber, however, managed to fly away, build up a 25-second lead, take his pitstop and come out in front to take the victory.
“I was pretty happy with the way I drove. I knew I needed to put some decent, consistent, solid laps in and pick the back markers off. Once we got the gap it made it more comfortable for the boys in the pit lane. I was very conservative for the whole thing, got the stop done and then went back out on the primes and controlled the race from there.”
Mark Webber
Elsewhere little happened. Lewis Hamilton retired and Rubens Barrichello hounded Schumacher for 10th, finally getting by, despite his former team-mate trying to shove the Brazilian into the wall at 180mph. The Stewards decided to let Michael off lightly with a 10-place penalty at the next race.
"I think it has been one of the most beautiful manoeuvres I've done and one of the most horrendous from him. At the end of the day we don't need that.”
Rubens Barrichello
“I indicated pretty early that I would move towards the inside and not simply give up the line, and there was just enough space for him to pass me without touching. It was a hard fight, and this is what we are here for.”
Michael Schumacher
Mark was overjoyed at the end, Alonso seemed pretty happy too. Vettel was phlegmatic.
Most of my other victories haven’t been gifted to me! I’m not complaining, you have to take them when you can get them. I still had a job to do. It’s a pretty long race, it’s not easy to get it right, but we did today.”
Mark Webber
“We paid a very expensive price, I would have loved to have won today, but in the end we got good points for the team.”
Sebastian Vettel
“I think third was where we deserved to be this weekend! But I did my maximum and we were lucky to have the scenario that we had here. What I know it that were 47 points behind before these two races and now the gap is only 20. We know how competitive Red Bull is, we know how competitive McLaren is – everything is still open!”
Fernando Alonso
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