On the circuit where he took his first win, way back in 2006, Jenson Button took his 11th Grand Prix win in his 200th race - and not in dissimilar fashion to that first win he took for Honda.
As ever the sprinkling of rain, before the start and on occasion during the race, provided much of the excitement but there was also a good deal of strategy which added some extra spice.
For once Sebastian Vettel got off the line perfectly, leaving the Mclarens firmly in his wake while the Ferraris fought amongst themselves and Alonso dropped all the way back behind both fast-starting Mercedes. Hamilton was in his element initially, far quicker than Vettel in the conditions and he was soon past the German.
Hamilton looked odds on favourite for the victory before a shower of rain played havoc with the order, bringing Button right up with his team mate, briefly ahead of him, and then back behind him again. The crucial moment of the race came at that moment, Hamilton made a disastrous call to come in and put intermediate tyres on while Button opted to stick it out - the call won him the race.
Vettel, who was promoted up the order first by Hamilton's erroneous call and then thanks to Hamilton's drive-through penalty (a fair one, in my view), looked to be closing the gap to the leader but Button had the pace to cover it.
It's difficult to say, given the circumstances of the race, whether Mclaren really have eliminated the Red Bull advantage, but at various points in the race the silver cars, and the Ferrari too, looked very fast indeed. I don't think there's much between the top three teams. That makes it all the more frustrating that Vettel leaves Hungary with his points lead in the Championship bigger than ever before. 85 points ahead with only eight races to go is close to insurmountable, but on the evidence of today we hopefully have some great racing still to come.
2 comments:
Great racing is right and we hope for more, but I fear the Championships all but over, tho the manufacturers is still open......if Ferrari and McLaren can keep the pressure up and keep bring two cars home.....Felipe dissappointed as did Alonso really, too many mistakes and poor pitstops for the red cars.I'm beginning to thionk we need sprinklers on every track, or rain dancers!The fact that most of the race was at much slower pace than usual probably masked some of the performance differences....Ferrari still finished well behind the leaders so maybe thier "recovery" is not as real as we think !?
Well as you say Fernando made a couple of mistakes which might account for the 19 second deficit to Button at the end of the race. I think the top three teams are fairly evenly matched (although RB still have a significant advantage in qualifying), but unless Vettel has a few DNFs then he's as good as champion already.
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