Hungarian GP talking points

Hoping for a race fit for the occasion

If the mood is bound to be sombre this weekend, then the hope is that the Hungarian GP does Jules Bianchi's memory proud by producing the sort of race we all know F1 is best capable of delivering.

Because while sadness might hang heavy over proceedings, there's no need for soul-searching: lessons have been learnt since Suzuka and measures taken. The sport is now safer than ever and while there is always more that can be done, everyone acknowledges that there'll always be an inherent danger - however small - involved. It's part of motor racing's appeal and while that in itself is an important thing to acknowledge, we live in enlightened times as far as safety is concerned. Too enlightened according to some, and occasionally one can see what they're getting at. Maybe we've been a little too complacent?

Maybe, maybe not. But in balancing action, excitement, risk, skill and bravery against the inevitable downside - and in playing out the result to a mass audience - F1 has the recipe better than ever before. It might be a little too much to ask for in light of the cracker we saw at Silverstone three weeks ago, but fingers crossed all the right attributes are there again for us to see in Budapest. Better still if Manor Marussia finish in the top 10.

MW

Will the tight Hungaroring tighten up the field?

After engine-dependent tracks in Canada, Austria and Silverstone handed the advantage to the Mercedes-powered runners, Hungary should see the field close up.

The tight nature of the Hungaroring - described by Daniel Ricciardo as "Monaco without the walls" - will be welcome news for the Renault and Honda-propelled runners.

"Even in Monaco, power is a factor, but it will have less of an influence and when we get to Hungary in a couple of weeks, it will again have less of an influence," Christian Horner told Sky Sports F1. "So hopefully we should be a bit more competitive."

Indeed, Red Bull's decision to take penalties for fresh engines in Austria was in part to ensure fresher units for Hungary ahead of power-dependent races at Spa and Monza.

Red Bull qualified fourth and fifth in Monaco, their best performance in the dry this year, and scored 22 points in the race - more than double their next best total of 10 this season. So might they be able to mix it with Ferrari and Williams this weekend? 

Likewise, McLaren will be confident of a better showing after slipping to the unwelcome title of second slowest team in F1 in recent races. Both cars looked like they could threaten Q3 in Monaco and Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso were running in the points during the race until unreliability struck the Spaniard once again.

Eric Boullier revealed last week the team are currently handicapped by a chronic failure with their energy recovery system, telling the official F1 website: "If you can deploy your MGU-K power on the straights on every lap, that is worth a lot of time. Today we can't do that." The good news for McLaren, then, is the Hungaroring only boasts one straight.

And what difference might the Hungaroring layout make to the fight at the front? Sebastian Vettel was able to keep the Mercedes drivers honest during the Monaco GP and if Sebastian can split the two Mercs in qualifying, then the German could be in contention for his second win of the season. After all, as we learnt in Monaco and Malaysia, the Mercedes pitwall doesn't always react well to pressure. 

WE

Expect Silly Season to whir into overdrive

... that time of year is upon us: silly season. In fact, it's already started, with reports in Italy suggesting that Valtteri Bottas is heading to Ferrari next year, with the Scuderia deciding not to exercise its option on Kimi Raikkonen. It's the sort of intrigue (and precisely the sort of sentence) that we'll be hearing more of during the summer, reaching critical mass in the autumn. Unless McLaren are involved, in which case we could be talking panto season again.

Somewhere in the intrigue will lie the seeds of truth, but a large part of it will be nonsense. And in recent times, it's been the Hungarian GP where the mischief has begun. This probably has something to do with its position on the calendar immediately prior to the summer break. In other words: what are we going to talk about for the next few weeks? We might manage to add two and two correctly, then again... that certainly wasn't the case a couple of years ago: never mind the fact that Lewis Hamilton had just won a race no-one really expected him to; what about the sighting of Fernando Alonso's manager in Red Bull's hospitality area? Christian Horner (probably for no other reason than to wind Ferrari up a bit) didn't deny an interest in the Spaniard as Mark Webber's replacement while Alonso did his part by criticising the Scuderia's car, which certainly wound up Luca di Montezemolo as he then rebuked his driver in public. Job done... The fact none of it ultimately amounted to anything was almost beside the point.

Alonso's travails at McLaren make him a natural to be lobbed back into the mix this time around, along with Bottas, Raikkonen, Nico Hulkenberg, Daniel Ricciardo, Jenson Button... in theory, every driver on Sunday's grid could be added to the list, although Lewis and Sebastian probably aren't going anywhere anytime soon. But the joy of F1's silly season is seeing what does come out; the crazier the better. And very occasionally, what did at first seem crazy actually turns out to be true.

MW

Could McLaren-Honda finally get started?

Detailing McLaren-Honda's woes has become 2015's Groundhog Day. Five months - nine, actually, if you start the clock at last November's Abu Dhabi test - into their reunion, the new-but-old partnership appear no closer to Mercedes than they were at the start of the season. The vultures have started to circle and condemnation from the critics has grown ever more acerbic in recent weeks. Will this be the weekend when they finally arm themselves with a suitable riposte?

As detailed above, the nature of the twisty Hungaroring should suit McLaren in so much as it won't highlight their weaknesses. Boullier's revelation that the team have yet to run their MGU-K at full power is alarming but also encouraging: why would the boss of McLaren, so keen hitherto to maintain a united front, reveal such a monumental and embarrassing flaw of their partners unless he believed a fix was now in place?

With the team so upbeat in the face of so much painful adversity, the sense has persisted all year long that either McLaren are mighty fine actors, naive optimists, or that they know something about their problems that the rest of us don't. There's still no light at the end of the tunnel, but there's also something unnervingly persuasive about McLaren's insistence that all good things will come to those wait. Just listen to this, for instance, from Fernando Alonso only last week: "I think the second part of the year will show a completely different McLaren, much more competitive. The steps that are coming are quite big."

We've asked it before but are we justified in asking again whether this might finally be the weekend when the McLaren-Honda reunion starts in earnest?

PG