GTP 7th F1 World Championship - Round 12 - Hungary
Weather - Light rain qualifying session, dry race with intermittent spits of rain.
Qualifying Results:
Pole -
Shaggy Alonso (Tyrrell) -
1:21.665 (10 pts)
2nd. - Pipeslice (Jordan) - 1:21.889 (8 pts)
3rd. -
DarkPSI (Benetton) -
1:22.315 (6 pts)
4th. - Baumi27 (Brawn)- 1:23.506 (5 pts)
5th. -
Mutu20 (Tyrrell)-
1:23.510 (4 pts)
6th. - Ardius (Brawn) - 1:24.680 (3 pts)
7th. -
pj-gm (Brabham)-
1:26.057 (2 pts)
8th. - Akmuq (Hesketh)- No time set (0 pts)
Race Results:
1st.
Shaggy Alonso (Tyrrell) (25 pts) = 47m58.553s
2nd.
Pipeslice (Jordan) (18 pts) + 26.7s
3rd.
DarkPSI (Benetton) (15 pts) + 11.4s (+40 secs pen)
4th.
Mutu20 (Tyrrell) (12 pts) + 1 lap
5th.
Baumi27 (Brawn) (10 pts) + 1 lap
6th.
Ardius (Brawn) (8 pts) + 1 lap
7th.
pj-gm (Brabham) (0 pts) DNF
8th.
Akmuq (Hesketh) (0 pts) DNF
Qualifying:
So we arrive at the Hungaroring, a mentally tiring and very technical track to drive. I knew from practice during the week that
DarkPSI had carried his impressive form from Hockenheim into this week, getting faster and faster with each passing day it seemed like. It's really as if someone has bolted 30 points of downforce on his car because he's found a way of going quite a bit faster than before.
Pipeslice has just always been plain fast and is an ever-present threat to pole position so we were in for a big battle again like last week.
The rain came in qualifying so I set up for 3 flying laps to start with. Got off to a bad start, semi-dropping the car under turn-in for the first corner (always a bitch of corner) and posted a disappointing high 1:23. The second lap was a marked improvement with a 1:22.4 and I found more time as the fuel went down with a 1:21.8 for provisional pole on my third flier.
I sat in the garage looking at the sector times and realised that if I hooked up a good lap by just improving my first sector where I was losing to both Dark and Pipeslice then I'd hopefully consolidate pole. I seemed to have an edge in the final sector. So with time remaining for two more consecutive flying laps I set about improving my first sector time. I was up by almost a tenth on my previous best (not bad, still not great) but didn't quite nail the rest of the lap and actually failed to improve. During his final flier, Pipeslice wrecked his car so this eased the pressure on me slightly but Dark was still in the hunt. Then on my final lap I was actually about a tenth down in the 1st sector, so threw caution to the wind and did a decent middle sector and then an even faster final sector and found 2 tenths improvement overall with a 1:21.6. I would start on pole from Pipeslice who's time remained good for 2nd place, and DarkPSI in 3rd.
Race:
During practice midweek I realised that fuel was marginal at the Hungaroring for a full race distance, not as critical as it was at Sakhir or Valencia, but enough to make a difference if anyone could save fuel better over another. As a result of this I had to adapt my driving style slightly in order to save fuel - I won't state exactly how I did this (many of you by now will have figured it out) but all i'll say is the net result was that I had what felt like a turbo-lag exiting the corners and a strange lack of feel for the throttle which I got used to eventually. Not to exaggerate, it probably only cost me on average a tenth of a second a lap maybe, if even? But more importantly than that, the lack of feel for the throttle meant it was much easier to spin out on corner exit than with my normal technique, which disrupts your rhythm (especially important at the Hungaroring), which hurts your confidence which slows you down - a vicious circle.
So it was a dry race and i'd have a tough job on my hands to keep the guys behind me over the 35 gruelling laps to come. However my job was made a whole lot easier when
Ardius came steaming from the back, missing his braking point and crashing into
Mutu20 creating a domino effect as he spiralled into
Pipeslice who then crashed into
DarkPSI. In one fell swoop, the 3 main challengers for the race were put to the back of the field after just turn one.
Tyrrell would like to announce Ardius as their new driver for 2012 (j/k)
I led away from
Baumi27,
Pj-gm and
Mutu20 in that order who formed a handy buffer between myself and
Dark and
Pipe who were forced to battle their way back to the front. I pulled away to form roughly a 6 second gap to those behind me but it didn't take long for
Pipeslice to cut his way through,
DarkPSI following closely in his wake and after a few more laps the front three of the starting grid had resumed this formation. With hindsight, I was definitely too lackadaisical in the first few laps as I could have built a bigger lead as protection for the rest of the race in case anything happened. I did up my game though when they were behind me and was able to match their times.
Then all of a sudden
DarkPSI was in second and I wondered what happened to
Pipeslice? I pulled out a couple more seconds on Dark before our pit-stops and emerged out of them with Pipeslice only about 7 seconds behind even though he'd been around 10 seconds back when he was in second. I should have realised at this point that he had gone for a two stopper (he had taken a 3 second chunk out of my lead on his fresh options) however he had yet to pit again so wouldn't be a threat unless his pace was markedly faster than me on his second stint, but with hindsight we now know the two stopper was definitely the wrong strategy as the option wasn't fast enough over the prime here. So it became a two horse race between
DarkPSI and myself. For some reason his pace between laps 12-20 roughly was enough for me to control the race, but he began matching my times and then bettering them as the fuel went down.
Even though Dark never got within 5 seconds of me, it was a highly intense race. I would say battling in this way, sector by sector, lap by lap is akin to a tug of war. You try to react to each others sector times by pushing (or pulling) more and more, the object being to defeat your opponent by sheer strength. However, when you're so evenly matched as we were, it comes down to trying to make your opponent slip if you can't overwhelm them with basic pace. We both had a few 'slips'. I made several mistakes throughout the race (not all when I was directly racing Dark), three mini spins out of turns 2, 4 and 9, the last one being lucky not to take my front wing off. I noticed with our sector times that I seemed to be pulling away in the first sector (a role reversal to what was happening when we practiced with each other) and we would be matched in the middle sector (where I was gaining heavily on him in practice) and the final sector could go either which way. It suggested to me that he was possibly running with more wing than before. I noticed on a couple of laps that he would gain almost a second on me in the middle sector alone so I figured he had cut the chicane, however he received penalties for each one and this meant that in the end he finished behind
Pipeslice.
I got the impression Dark really didn't enjoy himself this race, which is understandable as arguably he's been the fastest out of the lot of us since Hockenheim and hasn't been able to translate this into victories mainly because of first corner incidents which he was at no fault in. I of course won't be demoting him to 4th place for his punt on Mutu20 given just how far he finished ahead of him, but I will give him a 10 second penalty for not allowing Mutu20 to repass him (I have to seeing as Dark was given a warning for this in Bahrain). However he should keep his head high because he's got the pace and this inevitably will result in more victories for him 👍
Pj-gm got disconnected which was very unfortunate as he was on the verge of recording an excellent 4th place for only his third race in what has now become such a competitive championship.
Looking at the tables,
Mutu20 is gradually reeling in
Baumi27 with his increased speed and consistency in the races, though he only gained a solitary point over him in this race.
Pipeslice is starting to catch
DarkPSI slightly but the latter still has a healthy lead.
Ardius picked up a handy 11 points despite admittedly not having his best race.
Looking forward to Spa now, the most amazing circuit on the calender i'd say. See you all next Sunday
The Championship Tables (As of round 12):
Drivers Championship
1st.
Shaggy Alonso - 353 pts
2nd.
DarkPSI - 291 pts
3rd.
Pipeslice - 217 pts
4th.
Baumi27 - 195 pts
5th.
Mutu20 - 183 pts
6th.
Tombrooks97 - 66 pts
7th.
Ardius - 55 pts
8th.
kcheeb - 53 pts
9th.
MikeTheHockeyFan - 43 pts
10th.
AliT12 - 41 pts
11th.
Upuaut - 36 pts
12th.
NumbPhase - 34 pts
13th.
pj-gm - 26 pts
14th.
DOUQA - 19 pts
15th.
Jerry786 - 12 pts
16th.
Shark33 - 3 pts
17th.
Manios22DC - 2 pts
18th.
jordy7777 - 2 pts
Teams Championship
1st.
Tyrrell - 536 pts - Shaggy Alonso, Mutu20
2nd.
Benetton - 334 pts - DarkPSI, MikeTheHockeyFan
3rd.
Jordan - 298 pts - Tombrooks97, Pipeslice, Jerry786, Shark33
4rd.
Brawn - 252 pts - Baumi27, Manios22DC, Ardius
5th.
Hesketh - 108 pts - kcheeb, NumbPhase, DOUQA, jordy7777
6th.
Brabham - 103 pts - Upuaut, AliT12, pj-gm