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1. Over the last two and a half years of the most recent McLaren-Honda partnership, the Hungaroring has seen some of the best results achieved by the team. Fernando was 5th here in 2015 with Jenson Button also making it into the top ten for a rare double points finish, while last year Alonso was 7th and perhaps more significantly qualified 7th despite dropping it in the final part of the damp qualifying session; in fact he was 7th in every session. The first half of the team’s 2017 campaign has been pretty woeful but let’s not forget that Alonso was 7th on the grid in Spain, and Jenson’s sole appearance at Monaco saw him qualify 9th on the only other high downforce, relatively slow track so far. Engine penalties have already been taken in order to put them in a stronger position here and sheer horsepower is not much of a factor on this layout. It is true to say that best of the rest behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull means 7th, but lots can happen around this tricky circuit in the high heat of summer.
2. Fernando celebrates his 36th birthday on Saturday, just in time for qualifying. He is the third oldest driver on the current grid behind Raikkonen (38yo in October) and Massa (who turned 36 in April), yet is convinced he is driving better than ever. The way he adapted and performed at Indianapolis as well as grabbing the opportunity to set the pace in the first part of qualifying at Silverstone demonstrate that he has lost none of his nerve and sheer commitment to being the best, and he still commands huge respect within the paddock. Highly rated new team mate Stoffel Vandoorne has only beaten him once in qualifying this year. Age is no barrier to the truly great; Fangio was 46yo when he won his fifth and final world championship. 3. This has been a notable event for the Spaniard. Yes, he retired in his first ever race here for Minardi in 2001, but when he returned in 2003 at Renault after a season as test driver, he became the youngest ever winner of a Grand Prix at this very venue. He had recently turned 22yo, it was the 30th GP of his career and he won by over 16 seconds. Since then his record for being youngest winner has been taken by both Vettel and Verstappen, and he hasn’t added any more victories in Hungary, but he led in both 2006 and 2009 before suffering misfortune with wheel nuts, and he also led here in 2014 for Ferrari before Daniel Ricciardo zapped him at the end. 4. This is the last race before the summer break, and for all of Fernando’s talk about deciding nothing regarding his future until October, there is no denying that this is a key time to impress. It seems as though all other F1 avenues are closed to him, and that staying at McLaren is his only chance of being in a high profile seat, but who knows? Key decisions will be made over the next few weeks, decisions that not only determine driver line-ups for 2018 but potentially for the next few seasons and Alonso will want to keep his name in the frame. For a man who has been in a relatively uncompetitive car, he has done that with aplomb this year and Hungary offers one more chance to underline his talent. 5. Of course, listing Alonso as a man to watch this weekend means I have put the commentator’s curse on him, and he’ll probably get taken out on the first lap, as he was in Austria…So, who will win the Hungarian Grand Prix? It could be a close run thing, and if Ferrari want to pove they can take the fight all the way to Abu Dhabi, this is a big weekend for them. High temperatures are forecast for Sunday and that could benefit the Italian team with regard to tyre behaviour, despite what happened at Silverstone, but Hamilton has a brilliant record on this 2.7 mile track and is on a roll after the highs of his home race. Stealth campaigner Valtteri Bottas has yet to score a podium in Hungary when driving for Williams but as we saw in Austria and Sochi, he cannot be ignored. Meanwhile Red Bull will be looking to this weekend as a real opportunity to mix it with the two dominant teams; Daniel Ricciardo won in style three years ago and Max Verstappen is due some luck. Potentially we could have six cars fighting over the first few places on the grid and a game of cat and mouse on a track where overtaking is tricky. Throw Alonso into the mix with one of his exceptional first laps, and we could be seeing far more of him than expected.
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The number five has plenty of significance this weekend at Silverstone. For a start, my Channel 4 colleague Karun Chandhok is going to be driving Nigel Mansell’s title winning Williams from 1992 on a couple of demo laps, carrying the red 5 proudly in this 40th year of Williams in F1. Meanwhile, at the sharp end of the field Lewis Hamilton will be looking for win number five at the British Grand Prix, a feat that has only been achieved by one other British driver, Jim Clark. Hamilton has made Silverstone his own playground for the duration of the V6 turbo hybrid era which began in 2014, winning from 6th on the grid that first year after missing out in tricky conditions in qualifying, and then winning from pole for the last two years. His first win here in 2008 when at McLaren was also one of his most impressive, as he took victory by over a minute in the wet. He loves racing in front of his home crowd, but he also loves the very nature of Silverstone with its fast, flowing corners that demand total commitment where more than almost any other circuit on the calendar, drivers get a real buzz out of the sheer speed and the G forces that are generated here. Flat out through Copse this year? Sergio Perez reckons some drivers will achieve that at some point this weekend.
The 2017 cars with their extra grip and downforce are a perfect match for the layout and I can’t wait to see them at full tilt through both Copse and the Maggots/Becketts complex. I’d love to see a graphic on screen that gave us a sector time for just that one part of the track, so that we could really determine which chassis is working best through there. Looking at the pogress that has been made by Red Bull in recent events, I wouldn’t be surprised if Daniel Ricciardo or Max Verstappen were among the quickest in that section. Ricciardo is coming off the back of five successive podiums while Max is at the other end of the 5 spectrum with that figure as his total number of non finishes this year, but both of them will be feeling pumped by the race pace in Austria, where Ricciardo was able to fend off Hamilton; we heard his roar of delight as the significance of that sank in during the slow down lap. Carrying number 5 in current F1 is of course Hamilton’s great rival Sebastian Vettel. He arrives with a 20 point lead but hasn’t won a race since Monaco. His record here is not quite up there with Lewis; just the one victory in 2009 when he was at Red Bull, although there was a strong 3rd place for Ferrari in 2015. Spain this year saw a tremendous duel between the two of them, and there’s every reason to expect the Ferrari to be just as competitive on a track where efficient downforce is the key. Mind you, he’ll need to keep an eye on the other side of the garage as Kimi enjoyed a string of five podiums here in the mid noughties, culminating in victory in 2007 and he outqualified Seb last year. Fernando Alonso is another former winner here; in fact he has finished either first or second on five occasions, but bearing in mind the lack of power from Honda and that he’s suffered five retirements this year, his chances of success some five years since he was last on pole here are remote. A battle between Ferrari and Mercedes seems the most likely scenario once again and the Silver Arrows have already won five races this year, shared between their two drivers. They have also won the British GP five times, counting back to Sir Stirling Moss’s victory at Aintree in 1955. This is no short circuit, in fact it’s the third longest on the calendar, but Number 5 is Alive (and well) on the sweeps and turns of Silverstone. For all the drama of Baku and endless subsequent analysis, it’s time now to move on to the picturesque Red Bull Ring in Austria for the latest in what is becoming an intensely fiery battle up front between Vettel and Hamilton. But who carries the momentum at this stage of the season as we approach the halfway point in a week’s time at Silverstone? In my opinion it has to be Hamilton, despite the fact that he lost a further two points to Vettel last time out and missed out on a certain victory due to the bizarre problem with his headrest.
Vettel’s swerve at Hamilton in Azerbaijan was matched by his belligerence in not owning up at the time, but the subsequent worldwide attention and requirement to appear at the FIA in Paris to talk it through all detract from the intensity of focus that he should be applying to the task in hand. Beating Hamilton to the title will take every ounce of commitment both from him as a driver and from the team to continue updating and improving the car, and although he escaped without further censure, he still had to waste valuable energy on clearing up the mess he caused. Nine points on his racing licence and even more scrutiny from the FIA for the forseeable future mean he’s somewhat on the back foot going into a race in which he has so far failed to achieve a podium result. On top of that, Hamilton is coming off the back of two superb qualifying performances in both Canada and Baku which demonstrated that both he and the Mercedes team have solved some of the problems they had earlier in the year with regard to making the tyres work effectively. Remember Sochi and Monaco where Lewis struggled to bring the tyres in and where on both occasions he failed to qualify in the top three? Well, in Canada he was on the same Ultra Soft tyres that he used in those races, and which appear here in Austria, and his pole lap was sensational. Then in Baku, when on the slightly harder tyre, he managed to make it work despite having just the one tour to build temperatures and once again nailed the lap. This is the same man who has taken pole position here at Zeltweg for the last two years, and who fought back to win the race on the final lap last year. Vettel didn’t even get to the final lap here in 2016; he pushed his Ultra Soft tyres to a longer stint than Mercedes but they gave up in spectacular fashion on Lap 26, sending him to the barrier on the approach to Turn 1, so fourth place in 2015 remains his best result in Austria. This is the country that gave rise to two of his greatest supporters; Dietrich Mateschitz and Helmut Marko. Thanks to them he was racing a Formula BMW car here in 2003 at the age of 16 with Red Bull sponsorship, and without them he would never have taken four F1 titles with Red Bull Racing. Whether he can take inspiration at one of his racing spiritual homes and interrupt Hamilton’s momentum is, however, another matter. Lewis is on a roll, he has his home Grand Prix in a few days time where his supporters gain him a tenth or two, and a points lead of just 14 is not much of a buffer for Vettel going into these next two weekends. |
AuthorF1 commentator Ben Edwards sets out some thoughts. Archives
May 2018
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