HAMILTON HANDLES THE HEAT FOR THIRD WIN
(Image taken from BBC)
Three years ago, I was at the Hungarian Grand Prix and I found loud noise, an interesting city, a dodgy hotel and mad compatriots. Just a pity I wasn't there last year, when Jenson stormed from the back to take the race. This time round there was a new British hero, his name was Lewis Hamilton, but that didn't stop his team from having to dodge an FIA bullet with the spy thing going to appeal. Further down the grid there were a couple of driver changes, Spyker replaced Winkelhock with Sakon Yamamoto, the Japanese driver last seen driving for Super Aguri in Brazil last year. Further more, F1 is once again Yankless with Toro Rosso having booted Scott Speed in favour of Sebastien Vettel who did the business for BMW in Indy.
In qualifying, well Jenson looked to have made it into Q2 when the chequered flag fell only for his time to be beaten at the last possible second, forcing him to start from P17. DC made Q2 but had similar problems at the end of that session and so settled for P11 though Massa had an even worse time, starting from P14. In Q3 Raikonen set the first serious provisional pole time, only for Lewis to beat that time...and then get held up by Alonso in the pits. So the Spaniard wound up taking pole.
That wasn't the end of the matter as the FIA considered Alonso's stunt to be foul play and dropped him back to P6, thus giving Hamilton pole. In all honesty though, Hamilton had disobeyed team orders in Q1 which meant that both drivers played foul and the whole exchange was none of the FIA's business. It did mean that Hamilton picked up his fourth pole of the season with DC benefitting from another FIA decision, with Fisichella getting dropped from P8 to P13, boosting the Scot up to P10.
Well Jenson was never really able to go anywhere from P17 on the grid, not in this year's car. In fact he lost two places at the start and from there on in never looked like he was going to be able to do the business. Then again, Barrichello wasn't up to much either. Jenson crashed out a few laps after his first pitstop and a long way from the paddock at that. Only thing he can do in that situation is reload and hope to do better in Turkey, once again, better luck next time!
DC had a pretty good start, getting up to 9th before Kovaleinen pushed him back down though the Scot did later get to run in the points. However after his pitstop he found himself in 12th. He ran for the rest of the race on pretty solid but he was never going to be the man in the headlines on this occassion, the Red Bull didn't quite have the speed! He went on to finish 11th, making a mistake on pit stop strategy by banking on a safety car that never happened!
Lewis though didn't need a safety car. Lewis just needed a good start and to keep the competition behind him. The good start happened, the competition turned out to be Raikonen. The Finn chased the hot rookie down well enough and at one point looked to take advantage of back markers(including Massa) but that's what blue flags are for! Lewis's third win of the season and I'm still having to remind myself that this guy's a rookie!
So that leaves Lewis with 80 points, extending his World Championship lead to seven points! DC stays in 11th place with 8 points(but no top three finishes) which garuntees Lewis the status of 2007 British number 1, in his rookie year! Jenson remains in 16th with one point(and a further top ten finish).
The miracle still looks like happening!
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