I had huge hopes for Kimi this afternoon! Lotus´s pace seemed almost magical in all free practice sessions. The circumstances at Hungaroring couldn´t have suited Lotus any better: dry track and heat of +30 degrees Celsius... But still no pole for the Iceman today!
Q1 was business as usual. The only slight surprise can be considered the fact that it was Ricciardo who was out of Q2 whilst his Toro Rosso team-mate Vergne was able to make it to the Q2. I still remember the huge fuss about Ricciardo at the end of last season when he attended the test for young drivers at Abu Dhabi. How he was considered extraordinary and how he was able to set better lap times than Vettel at the wheel of the Red Bull... Today his performance didn´t seem magical at all and he couldn´t even match his team-mate´s speed!
Although it was a dry qualifying, there certainly were a few surprises in Q2! The biggest of them was the fact that Webber didn´t make it to the Q3! Throughout the qualifying both Red Bull drivers seemed to struggle with their pace. Just wondering what the story behind the engine mapping episode really is... The team has naturally assured that changing the engine mapping hasn´t influenced their performance but to be honest, I don´t believe it´s the truth though. Even Vettel nearly got out of Q2 by being 17th in the standings...! Red Bull wasn´t the only team who was struggling. Mercedes had the worst qualifying for two years! Rosberg qualified 13th and Schumi 17th.
Hamilton´s driving was phenomenal today. He did a magical lap already in Q2 and at that point I was almost certain that the Briton was going to take pole! And he did it by four tenths of a second! Kimi had flashed a glimpse of his true speed but when it really mattered he failed to score... His team-mate Grosjean instead managed to clinch a front row starting position for tomorrow! Vettel qualified 3rd, Button 4th and Kimi 5th. I was afraid there was going to be another penalty for Vettel because at the end of the qualifying it was still uncertain if Vettel had crossed the white line with all four wheels of his RB8 in his flying lap... Thank God there was no penalties this time!
What really matters is that Vettel will start ahead of Alonso tomorrow! Alonso will start in P6 so the most important thing for Vettel tomorrow is to score more points than Alonso... Sebastian needs to decrease the gap between him and Alonso from 44 points to as low as possible! Though I´m afraid that Ferrari´s race pace will be dangerously good tomorrow.
At the same time as I´m hoping Sebastian to have a successful race tomorrow I´m hoping that this could be Kimi´s weekend after all... P5 isn´t a bad position to start the race! And the Iceman has been taking some magical starts so he has every chance to make it to the podium... If all goes to the plan! Grosjean might well end up to a collision once again and Button has been struggling with his car in almost every race... So who knows!
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