2010 Hungarian Grand Prix - A Highlight before the Summerbreak

This weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix delivered everything Formula One fans can wish for: truly riveting racing and rivalry that held some surprises for those who thought they had this seasons results all figured out.

The qualifying sessions on Saturday still provided the expected results with Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel starting from the pole and his team mate Mark Webber on second position. Red Bull was closely followed by the Ferraris of Alonso and Massa, who had just won the first and second place at the German Grand Prix last week. Lewis Hamilton set-off as fifth followed by Nico Rosberg (Mercedes), Vitaly Petrov and Robert Kubica (Renault), Pedro de la Rosa (Sauber) and Nico Hulkenberg (Williams), eleventh came the defending champion Jenson Button.

The race took off and soon all expectations were turned upside down as Fernando Alonso took over the second position and left Webber trailing behind. Vettel for his part built up a two-second lead within the first two laps, probably owing to improvements on his chassis. At the same time Jenson Button was still underbidding his disappointing performance on qualifying and descended from the 11th to 15th position. Also his team mate Hamilton was having difficulties and was overtaken by Rosenberg and Petrov. Things were still worse for Jaimie Alguersuari who’s Toro Rosso’s engine gave up in the third lap and forced him to retire early from the race. Schumacher on the contrary worked his way up from 14th to 13th.

Throughout the main part of the race, Vettel continued to lead with a comfortable four seconds gap on the rest of the field that promised an easy win. However, fate changed as it came to the first round of stops when a safety car cleared the tracks of debry. The Hungaryring was frantic with almost all cars exiting and reentering pitlane simultaneously which lead to some confusion and spelled the end for Rosberg’s and Sutil’s race. Webber survived unschated as he stayed out on track and took over the lead from Vettel. Vettel saw his chances of regaining the lead dwindle as he was punished with a drive-through-penalty for exceeding the 10 car gap rule to the pace car, and he rejoined in third position after Alonso and Webber.

Another heartbeat-moment came as Barrichello attempted an attack on Schumacher’s tenth position. Schumacher fought back and almost pushed his former team mate into the wall. This agressive move by Schumi later resulted in a penalty for unsportsmanship conduct.

The final result meant a well-deserved victory for Mark Webber and a lead for the Red Bull Team for both titles. Vettel had to resign himself to a third place behind a triumphant Alonso in second place. The remaining field came in as follows: Massa (Ferrari/4th), Petrov (Renault/5th), Hulkenberg (Williams/6th), de la Rosa (Sauber/7th), Button (McLaren/8th), Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber/9th) and Rubens (Williams/10th).

The Hungarian Grand Prix keeps up the excitement in this seasons Championship and makes Formular One fans look with some anticipation to the next race at the Belgian Grand Prix on August 29th after a three week summerbreak.