Trepidation Over Grand Prix of Hungary Haunts Teams

by Motor Sports Unplugged | July 29, 2011 at 05:36 am

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You would be almost within your rights as a fan or participant to think that Bernie Ecclestone and company somehow concocted the ‘on again, off again’ blown diffuser rules. It worked beautifully to both cause drama and angst among the teams and fans. Drama for the fans and nightmares for the teams.

Two races that stand out like Jimmy Durante’s nose are Silverstone’s restricted use of off-throttle diffusers and Nurburgring’s full use of the system. Not very much information could be gained from either race as the conditions were so opposite. The Hungarian Grand Prix is the first race that seems to have stable weather that can give a solid base line reading on what progress the top teams have made.

Alonso wasn’t supposed to win at Silverstone, a track that traditionally, meaning since last season, hasn’t been kind to the Scuderia. Hamilton wasn’t supposed to win the German Grand Prix, weather played a role, which only added to the massive variables in using engine mapping, tires, blown diffusers, etc., but he did.

Now in rare back-to-back Grand Prix scheduling, Germany straight to Budapest, the teams had precious little time to become granular in their analysis of what happened. The normal process for the teams is to be capable of bringing updates based on the track itself. That’s not going to happen today. The only thing that’s even close to being tangible is the computer analysis of what to implement and most of that is based on last year’s cars.

According to Sebastian Vettel, who still seems to be in a funk over his performance at Germany said: "Every race is different – the conditions can be very different, the circuits are different," he said. "We were very competitive here last year so we will see, but the car is not last year's car, it is a new car.

"It's a new challenge again, so we see what we can do, but we expect Ferrari and McLaren to be very quick and to be our main rivals.

"Looking over three, four or five races, you can speak of a tendency and you can say Ferrari in particular have improved their pace and they are getting quicker and quicker. Surely they are one of the favourites going into this race." He sounds nervous.

A very different message from Hamilton’s earlier bravado suggests that he has come down off of his victory induced high from Germany to say: "The car's (McLaren) not changed. I'm confident in its reliability, in its performance, but we know it's definitely not the fastest car here," said Hamilton.

"We know the others still have a very competitive car that suits certain conditions, and the Red Bull has been quick at every single track throughout the year.

"It was quick at the last race, it still grabbed pole, whereas we don't have a car that's fast everywhere. It's fast in some places, not so fast in others."

Alonso’s public declaration that Red Bull is still the dominate car isn’t without merit, although he has called for the other teams in the fight to gang up on RBR. If the Hungaroring’s weather forecast is correct, which in layman’s terms means stable, partly cloudy to sunny with temperatures in the low 70’s –Fahrenheit for us Americans –then a benchmark can reasonably be laid down upon which to make decisions that are of the less than ‘hair on fire’ variety for the next series of races.

What’s truly interesting about this race is that it will require more mechanical grip than either of the two preceding events. The great mystery is what updates the teams are bringing to the show. My prediction is that the DRS systems may become more relevant than the off/over run blown diffusers. First and second practice will be over by the time of this posting, however second practice today will telegraph a story. These teams aren’t in a position right now to sandbag their way through P2.

What happens next? Who the hell knows but my bet is that Red Bull ran their engineers 24 hours a day to try and get it right.