What an epic race in Hungary today! The conditions were very unusual from those we´ve been used to see in Hungary in previous years. The circuit was wet so all the drivers started the race with the intermediate tyres. Vettel got a very decent start keeping both Hamilton and Button behind him. But the German wasn´t able to maintain his lead for long... Hamilton was pushing extremely hard behind the Red Bull driver putting pressure on him. And then it happened on lap 5 at turn 2... Vettel made a mistake and went wide and Hamilton passed him! At that time I was sitting on the sofa screaming my voice off...!
There was no uncertainty about Hamilton´s speed. He pulled off from Vettel immediately after overtaking him and made a clear gap. Vettel seemed to be in difficulties at the beginning of the race, he had hard time to keep the other McLaren driver Button behind him! And the circumstances were tricky, no doubt about it. Vettel wasn´t the only driver to make a mistake! Also Alonso got wide at least a couple of times and Hamilton had a spin aswell which caused a dangerous situation. Paul Di Resta in his Force India was about to crash into Hamilton´s car when he tried to turn his car to get back on the track... Button was able to overtake his team-mate at this stage and after this we saw some very entertaining wheel-to-wheel battle between the two McLaren drivers! They kept it fair which was a pleasure to see!
The light rain started on lap 47 and it caused different decisions made by the teams. Hamilton came to the pits to put the intermediate tyres on like many other drivers did, too. That was a wrong call! Button on the other hand had put the soft tyres on and was leading the race! Hamilton had to change back to the softs after only a few laps and he also got penalised because of the situation with Di Resta earlier on the race so he was given a drive through penalty. Hamilton lost positions due to the penalty but he wasn´t going to give up...! On the closing stages of the race Hamilton was able to overtake Mark Webber and finished the race 4th! Without the mistakes and the penalty he would certainly have fighted for the victory, he showed some unbelievable pace indeed!
Button was the only top driver not to make any clear mistakes today and he had the perfect tactics aswell. He totally deserved to win today. What an awesome way to celebrate his 200th grand prix! Vettel seemed a bit disappointed at the press conference after the race. He clearly wasn´t satisfied with the 2nd place, he thought the win would have been in reach... But in terms of the championship standings it really doesn´t look bad for Vettel. He managed to increase his lead making it up to 85 points! That´s utterly amazing, I would say! Alonso finished 3rd today. The Ferraris didn´t turn out to be as competitive as I thought they would be. At the start both Alonso and Massa had hard time to fight with the Mercedes drivers!
Heidfeld´s retirement was spectacular but scary. His Renault Lotus caught fire on lap 25 just after his pit stop! There was even a small explosion when the officials tried to put down the fire. No wonder Heidfeld tried to get out of his car as soon as possible! More retirements occurred today than we have seen at the previous races this season as also drivers like Schumacher and both Lotus drivers retired due to technical failures.
So now it´s going to be a 4-week break before the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of August... I´m suffering from the withdrawal symptoms already! Four weeks without any Formula 1 action just seems too long a time... I hope Vettel (and all the other drivers) will have an awesome and relaxing summer holiday and I count on seeing Vettel back in action at Spa stronger than ever...! And by the way... For those who think that Vettel can´t overtake... He did overtake Alonso today and it happened on the track, not during the pit stops ;)
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