Hungaroring, 1 August 2010

Fernando Alonso produced a sensational drive to finish second in the Hungarian Grand Prix, while Felipe Massa delivered a faultless performance on his return to the Hungaroring, finishing where he started in fourth place. In fact, the thirty points the Scuderia takes into the summer break is probably slightly more than expected, given the week long dominance of the Red Bulls, who finished first and third courtesy of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel.

The race was more interesting than might have been expected at this twisty track, where overtaking is so difficult. As everyone in the Ferrari garage had hoped, starting from third on the clean side of the track, Fernando got the jump on Webber at the start to go second behind Vettel, while Felipe stayed fourth. When the Safety Car came out on lap 15 for debris to be cleared, almost the entire field pitted at the same time, which caused chaos, as Robert Kubica in the Renault and Adrian Sutil in the Force India collided, while Nico Rosberg lost a wheel that bounced through the pits. Webber did not stop and was thus in the lead, while the run of pit stops saw Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren get ahead of Felipe, after Ferrari staged a double pit stop which went off smoothly. However, the Englishman would later park his car at the side of the track, so that Felipe moved back to fourth where he stayed to the flag.



Webber had opted to stay out on track at this time and thus led from Vettel, Alonso, Hamilton and Felipe. However, on the Safety Car’s last lap, while Webber stuck close on its tail, Vettel left almost half a pit straight distance between him and his team-mate, evidently trying to help him build up a big enough lead before his pit stop. However, this was against the regulations and the German was given a drive-through penalty, which promoted Fernando to second place, with Felipe around 2.5 seconds behind the Red Bull. The pace of the Red Bulls was such that Vettel had soon closed right up on Fernando so that, in a slower car, the Spaniard then had to play a cat and mouse game with the German to keep him behind him for around half the 70 lap race: it was a bravura performance, dealing with the relentless pressure of a faster car on his gearbox. Webber however was well out in front, having built up a big enough lead to hang onto first place comfortably, after changing tyres.

Fifth place went to Vitaly Petrov in the Renault. Nico Hulkenberg was sixth for Williams, the last driver to finish on the same lap as the leaders. The rest of the points went to Pedro De La Rosa, Jenson Button, Kamui Kobayashi and Rubens Barrichello in tenth place. Going into the compulsory summer break, with a four week gap to the thirteenth round of the World Championship, the Belgian Grand Prix, Fernando’s great drive means he is now just twenty points off the leader in the Drivers’ championship and indeed, no less than five drivers are all within these 20 points, so the rest of the year promises to be a fascinating fight. Felipe has also moved up to sit behind his team-mate in sixth place, while Ferrari is still third in the Constructors’ classification.