KOVALAINEN'S TURN FOR GLORY
It's a place where the locals advertise free rooms in German. A place with taverns that serve good goulash soup and local beer. A place that isn't known for producing classic races though. It's the Hungaroring, home of the Hungarian Grand Prix. I was there back in '04 and was not-so-fortunate to see Michael Schumacher secure his seventh world championship! More recently though, British drivers have had a good record in this race. Jenson won it in '06 and Lewis won in '07. This time round the main thing that raised my eyebrows pre-race was the possibility of Super Aguri making a comeback in some form. As far as the race itself was concerned though, Lewis was the form man once more and Hungary was meant to be one of his stronger races of the season.
Well in qualifying it was another solid performance for the Brit with all three of them surviving Q1! Jenson did have to dodge a bullet though Barrichello wasn't so lucky, promising stuff from Jenson. However both Jenson and DC fell away in Q2 with DC starting P13 while Jenson managed to snap out P12 with seconds on the clock! Finally it was Q3 and the Toyota's were first to try their hand with Glock putting down the first marker before Lewis went ahead and stayed ahead to claim his second pole in a row! Kovalainen came up with P2 to complete the first all-McLaren front row of the season, Lewis's Finnish teammate showing his own promise.
Jenson didn't have the best of starts and was 14th at the end of lap one and despite some issues with Heidfeld, steadilly made his way up the field while others pitted and looked to be challenging for points by the time he made his own stop. That put him into 15th but from there on in his race was pretty uneventful. I suppose things could have been worse - at least Jenson got to finish so reliability isn't an issue. The team even seemed to be realatively happy with his performance but the fact that they're happy with 12th tells you all you need to know about Honda's 2008 season. Another forgettable result for the one time Grand Prix winner in another largely forgettable season.
DC seemed to largely stay out of trouble in the early stages of the race and that gradually got him into a points position while everyone else pitted. He got as far as 5th before pitting but unfortunately his stop was a long one and when he came out he found himself in 14th with Barrichello on his back. That wasn't quite as good as it got but the Scot wasn't able to move much further up the field than that and wound up settling for 11th and he partly had retirements to thank for that. Another dissapointing race for DC and though there is still time, he is one driver that I'm hoping doesn't have his career ending with a whimper but better drivers than him have had similar luck.
Lewis's race started badly when Massa took him at the start and the Brit found himself in the Brazilian's dust though he was very much best of the rest. Lewis did get to lead for a bit during the pitstops but couldn't make it stick and came out in 6th but soon returned to 2nd. Cue a serious pursuit between the two rivals...but one that ended in disasterous fashion when Lewis spun off and was forced to pit due to a puncture and the resulting pitstop sent him down to 11th! He made his way back into the points after a while but it still looked like he would suffer a serious dent to his championship plans untill a major retirement up front allowed him to finish 5th.
Overall though it looked to be Massa's race and witth his only competition, Lewis dropping out of the picture the race was his to collect. The Brazilian surged to a large lead over Kovalainen, the race seemed to be over but in the words of Murray Walker, anything can happen in Formula 1 and it usually does. On this occasion I wound up cheering when Massa's engine blew with five laps to go! That turned the race and championship race on it's head and allowed Kovalainen to pick up the first Grand Prix win of his career in his second year in F1! Glock finished second for the first podium of his career. Raikonen finished third to boost his title chances with Alonso fourth.
So, Lewis still leads the championship despite all that with 62 points, actually increasing his lead to five points. Further down, DC's down to 15th place with 6 points(and a 3rd place in Canada) and even further down, Jenson is in 17th on 3 points.
Next up, F1 goes into unchartered territory.
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