Leapfrogging Nico Rosberg both on-track and in the standings, Lewis Hamilton couldn’t have asked for a better Sunday at the Hungaroring
From 43 points down after Sochi, the comeback is no longer on for Lewis Hamilton – it’s complete.
Getting the best of a three-way fight into the first corner, Hamilton was able to keep pole-sitter Nico Rosberg at bay all the way to the chequered flag and take his fifth career victory in Hungary. His fifth win in six races, he leaves Budapest six points clear with his first championship lead of the 2016 season.
As is the case often at the Hungaroring, passing opportunities were at a premium over the course of the race, with Rosberg just one of several drivers able to close a gap, but never overcome it. Case-in-point were the battles behind the Mercedes pair, with Daniel Ricciardo leaving Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel similarly frustrated on his way to third, while his teammate Max Verstappen did the same to Kimi Raikkonen in a controversial fight for fifth.
The first win for Mercedes in Budapest since their run of dominance began in 2014, Sunday’s race was a return to normal for the team as much as it was their leading driver. Read on for a look at the big talking points from the 2016 Hungarian Grand Prix.
For the first time in 2016, Lewis Hamilton leads the driver’s championship.
Overcoming a 43-point deficit with one race to go before the summer break, Hamilton made it look easy in putting together one of the more controlled drives of his season.
As routine as a race at the Hungaroring can get, the sub-two second gap from Hamilton to Rosberg at race-end is a poor indicator of how safe Hamilton really was after winning the run to the first corner. While Rosberg was forced to cover a hard-charging Daniel Ricciardo, Hamilton slipped down the inside, taking the lead and never looking back on his way to victory.
The rest of the race was an exercise in pace management, as while Hamilton was given several radio messages about his pace, the truth was he was never under threat from Rosberg. Several times the German closed to well-within DRS range, only to see Hamilton immediately extend his lead again – at a track like this, with equal machinery and identical strategy Rosberg was left hoping for a mistake that would never come.
Even after conceding pole to Rosberg in a controversial Saturday qualifying, it’s clear that right now, Hamilton has the measure of his Mercedes teammate. Since his first win in Monaco, the Brit has taken three poles and five wins to Rosberg’s two and one respectively. Aside from breaking out a celebratory dab several months after it stopped being relevant, Hamilton has hardly put a foot wrong recently, and the standings now reflect that. If it was true of Rosberg over the end of 2015 and start of 2016, the same is now true of Hamilton – he’s simply better.
Young versus old. It’s a battle as ancient as time itself. On Sunday, we got to see the F1 equivalent as Max Verstappen refused to get off Kimi Raikkonen’s lawn.
Locked in a dogfight for 29 laps to the chequered flag, the 18-year-old Verstappen deployed some perhaps dubious defensive measures in order to keep the twice-his-age Raikkonen behind him. Most notably as the pair came into the only real passing spot on the circuit at turn two, where on lap 57 Verstappen eased his car off the racing line before commencing corner turn-in, taking one of Raikkonen’s front-wing endplates as the Finn moved to take him around the outside. Unsurprisingly, Raikkonen was none too pleased by the Dutchman’s purported double-move while conversely, the stewards remained uninterested.
Regardless of whether it was legal or not, it’s strange the stewards felt the incident didn’t even warrant an investigation, as it seems they simply didn’t know what to make of it. While the rules are pretty clear in terms of what a defending driver making one move only, what Verstappen was doing could almost be termed counter-attacking instead, drifting off-line, but waiting for Raikkonen to show his hand before making an actual move. Sky commentator Martin Brundle seemed thrown by it, so maybe the stewards were too.
In a way, it’s actually kind of impressive Verstappen found a way to skirt what should be a fairly straightforward rule, and it’s hard to fault him for trying it. As in life, so it is in F1 – with youth comes a willingness to test the boundaries. Could he have been penalised? Absolutely. Should he have been? Apparently not. When it comes to defending at the front of the grid, there’s as much an unwritten understanding of what a driver can do as there is an explicit one, and learning that comes with experience he simply doesn’t have. For now, Verstappen remains one of the most exciting drivers on the grid, not just because he can match the Raikkonens of the sport, but because he’s able to leave his own very unique stamp in doing so. Whether through future penalties or incidents, he’ll learn where the limit is but until then, expect him to keep pushing it.
How the hell are we still talking about this?
Three races after it became an issue, two weeks after it became farcical, and the radio ban has somehow gotten worse, this time penalising McLaren’s Jenson Button for receiving assistance for a malfunctioning brake pedal.
Already relegated to last by the issue, Button was forced to serve a drive-through penalty for the discussion with his race engineer. There’s nothing new to be said here – this is a problem that Button can’t possibly be expected to fix on his own, and surely needed to be rectified ASAP if not for his own race, then certainly the safety of others. Something is seriously off when this gets a penalty while actual collisions aren’t even put under investigation – although maybe the reason the Raikkonen-Verstappen incident was ignored was because the stewards were too busy high-fiving each other for enforcing this inane rule on Button.
If it wasn’t clear already, it is now – the FIA have no idea what they’re doing with the radio rules. Speaking post-race, Red Bull boss Christian Horner called for the introduction of a “common sense rule” for such matters, and with a meeting of the F1 Strategy Group on Thursday, hopefully he and the other team principals can finally get things sorted. Who they’re trying to appeal to with the current course of the rules is anyone’s guess – the teams don’t want it, the drivers don’t want it, and neither do the fans. It’s about damn time it got sorted.
Is the championship now Hamilton's to lose? Should Verstappen have been penalised? Will common sense eventually prevail with the radio rules? Let us know your thoughts on the race in the comments below.
