Jolyon Palmer's GP2 Diary - Hungary
The weekend started badly, but finished with a podium in Budapest
Friday 1 August 2014 11:02, UK
The last round before the summer break was Budapest, one of my best tracks and one of my favourite cities on the calendar.
There is usually a great vibe over the weekend, starting when we landed at the airport and, as usual there, the passionate fans are waiting for autographs and photos. Hungarian drivers are few and far between – there is no Hungarian in F1, GP2 or GP3, yet the crowd is always large and enthusiastic. I think Budapest is fully deserving of a place on the grand prix calendar.
My weekend didn’t get off to the best start on Friday. Halfway through free practice I was bizarrely driven into by Johnny Cecotto. I saw him coming behind me on a quick lap and got well out of the way at Turn Two. He went in too deep and locked up, clattering into me, damaging my car and puncturing my left front. It was clearly an innocent mistake from him but nonetheless a bit of a silly one that cost both of us track time, some damage and for him a three-place grid penalty. I could only limp back to the pits, put on a spare wheel and do a few practice starts for the remainder of the session with my hobbled car.
Qualifying was difficult for me after missing the track time in practice and I could only end up in sixth after a few more problems that I won’t bore you with! What made matters a bit harder was that my main championship rival, Felipe Nasr, out qualified me for the first time in a year, with his first pole in GP2. He did two laps good enough for pole so no one could dispute his pace on Friday! Campos Racing also put in a great showing to qualify third and fourth which put me back to the third row.
Race One for us was basically decided by a Safety Car on lap six. This meant the drivers who started on options could pit for the prime tyres and re-join at the back of the pack, effectively having a ‘free’ pitstop as the safety car meant they barely lost any time. Unfortunately the drivers who started on the harder prime tyre, like me, couldn’t do the same because the soft tyre would never last for the remaining 31 laps, so we had to fight it out on track with each other, at the same time as trying to pull around a 30 second gap to the guys who had already pitted so we could re-join ahead still much later in the race.
I had a great scrap all race with Nasr, initially for the lead, but then for the edge of the top eight as we couldn’t quite pull enough of a gap to come re-join ahead of Arthur Pic, the leading runner to have stopped early. I could only manage fourth in the end but I was happy to be the leading runner who didn’t get the benefit of the early Safety Car to do their stop. The podium consisted of Pic, Adrian Quaife-Hobbs (who started 22nd) and Takuya Izawa (who started 26th), but take nothing away from them, we all knew that a Safety Car could come and have the effect it did but most of us took the risk. They all drove good races because there were plenty of other runners who were on the same strategies as them who didn’t get the results. Pic was strong all weekend and he fully deserved his first win and Campos’ first since their comeback this year.
The Sprint Race was less exciting overall, but I managed to come from six
