2013 Hungarian Grand Prix Preview

We have reached the half way mark of the 2013 Formula 1 Season. This weekend its time for the 10th Round of the season at the Hungaroring Circuit, near Budapest in Hungary. The last race in Germany was three weeks back. During the break drivers and teams were kept busy thanks to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, The "Young" Drivers Test where F1 drivers took part too and a racing show in Moscow where a few teams showcased their car. Now its time for them to get back into the car and go all out for the Championship.

Track:

The Hungarian Grand Prix has been held at the Hungaroring circuit ever since its inception back in 1986. The Circuit has 16 turns and runs over 4.3 Kilometers. This circuit is known to witness very little overtaking with last year's race having just 19 overtaking moves, in comparison Monaco had 23 overtakes last year.

There will be two DRS zones at this year's Grand Prix in order to aid overtaking even further. The first one on the Start/Finish Straight and the other one on the short run down to Turn 2. There will be only one detection point just before the final turn. As the second DRS zone is closer to the first one, the drivers closing in on the Start/Finish straight will be able to make a move into turn 2. So expect quite a lot of action at turn 2!

Sebastian Vettel yet to win at Hungary:

Three time World Champion and Red Bull Racing driver has never won the Hungarian Grand Prix before. He has a best finish of Second place at the track. After breaking his July Jinx in Germany, we can expect Vettel to be really strong this weekend like he always his and possibly take home the winner's trophy and end his win-less streak at this track.




High Temperatures:

This weekend we can expect to see higher than usual temperatures, with the forecast for the weekend being in the range of 32C to 36C. The track temperature could very well go above 45C. This high temperature coupled with the degradation issues that some teams may face will throw a few surprises.

Adrian Sutil's 100th Grand Prix:


Force India driver Adrian Sutil will be starting his 100th Grand Prix this weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The German Driver has been with the Force India team ever since its inception and has scored a best finish of 4th place in Monza in 2009.





Tyres:

Pirelli are going to bring a revised set of tyres that were tested in Silverstone last week during the 3 day test. This weekend they are going to bring the Medium and Soft tyres to cope with the high down-force circuit. We have to wait and see if there are any major changes because of the tyres this weekend.

The race will be run over 70 laps and will be a treat to watch. This race could very well set the tone going into the second half of the year. So any advantage obtained will be a great opportunity for all teams.  

2013 German Grand Prix: Vettel wins at Home!

The 9th Grand Prix of the season might not have given us tyre blow outs, which is good, but it sure did give us a lot of racing action. Lets take a look at how Vettel ended his drought at home to win his first Home Grand Prix!

Practice:
Mercedes had the best possible start after Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg topped FP1. Alonso had a bad start when he couldn't set a time. FP2 began and it was home favorite Sebastian Vettel finished the session on top. Mercedes still looked strong and it looked like it was going to be Mercedes Vs Red Bull this weekend! Sebastian Vettel continued his dominant form by finishing on top in FP3. It was Rosberg and Webber again behind him as Ferrari showed some pace!

Qualifying:
Q1 saw the usual suspects fall out in the form of the two Caterhams and Marussias. Along with them it was the two Williams cars, who were still struggling for pace! Q2 gave us a shock after Nico Rosberg failed to make the cut because the team decided against sending him out for another lap. Both Force India's failed to make the top 10 along with Perez, Gutierrez and Vergne. Lewis Hamilton put in a stunning lap to claim pole in Q3, Vettel and Webber were behind him. Lotus were in 4th and 5th and Ferrari occupied the 4th row! Hulkenburg rounded out the top 10.

Race:

Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber had really good starts and they went ahead of Hamilton, who suffered from wheel spin at the start, dropped back to 3rd! Massa, Van der Garde and Perez all made up positions at the start.

On Lap 3 Felipe Massa spun heading into turn 1. The car's anti stall dint work and this meant it was race over for the Brazilian. After the race Massa said that his car was stuck in 5th gear and it just wouldn't come back down. A disappointing ending to a good start.

Lap 7 onwards the drivers started pitting for fresher tires. The first pit stop for Webber was disastrous, he pulled away from his pit box before his rear wheel went on properly and this resulted in the wheel hitting a FOM Cameraman who was in the pits at that time. This knocked down the Cameraman by name Paul Allen.













The medical staff quickly took care of the cameraman who was airlifted to a Hospital. After the race FIA released a statement and it was reported that the Cameraman suffered from two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a severe concussion.

Webber's car was wheeled back to his pit box and the wheel was put back on. This meant the Australian dropped to 21st and started a battle up the field! Webber's battle was given a boost after the field up because of a safety car period! The Australian had a great battle to finish in 7th!

On lap 23 Jules Bianchi's Marussia was up in flames but he safely got out of his car. The fire was quickly extinguished but the car rolled back on the track and this brought out the Safety Car. Immediately drivers came in for fresh tires. Hamilton's Mercedes was struggling on its tires and just wasn't as good as it was in Qualifying.






7 laps later on lap 30 the SC came in and the race restarted. Vettel managed to stay ahead while his teammate was charging up the field. Grosjean was up into P2 just ahead of Raikkonen. Both the Lotus cars looked amazing and were closing in on Vettel.

The top 3 were covered by less than 1.3 seconds. Just when they were getting any closer, Vettel and Grosjean pit for fresh tires as Kimi took over the lead.



At this point Button and Alonso were up there right behind this pack but they were yet to pit for options!

Vettel and Grosjean were making good progress but Hamilton made it difficult for them to pass.

With 10 laps remaining, Raikkonen and Alonso pit for the final time. Both put on the softs and were on their way to the flag!

Grosjean and Raikkonen exchanged fastest laps one after the other. The Lotus team asked Grosjean not to hold up Raikkonen, who looked mighty fast on those soft tires. After Raikkonen passed Grosjean with 5 laps to go, Alonso started closing in on the Frenchman for 3rd place.







Raikkonen was closing in on Vettel but with not a lot of laps left, The young German managed to hold off Kimi to the flag. This meant Vettel won his first Home Grand Prix and his first win in the month of July!

The Finn finished just 1 second behind Vettel. Grosjean managed to stay ahead of Alonso, while Hamilton made a late race charge to finish ahead of Button for 5th.

The McLaren's finished in 6th and 8th and this meant that they closed the gap to just 10 points to Force India as Force India, who finished in 11th and 13th, suffered their first point less race in 7 races! Hopefully this is just one off and they get back to speed in Hungary!

Rosberg finished in 9th after what was supposed to be a very good home race and Hulkenburg takes his second consecutive 10th place.

The Williams team failed to score a point yet again and their drivers finished in 15th and 16th!

Three retirements from this race are Massa, Bianchi and Vergne who suffered a Hydraulics failure during the race.

The Force India team was fined 5,000 euros for unsafe release during Di Resta's pitstop when he was released in Vergne's path and the Red Bull team were fined a heavy 30,000 euros for Webber's unsafe release.

Results:

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	60	1:41.14.711	2	25
2	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	60	+1.008	4	18
3	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	60	+5.830	5	15
4	3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	60	+7.721	8	12
5	10	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	60	+26.927	1	10
6	5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	60	+27.996	9	8
7	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	60	+37.562	3	6
8	6	Sergio Pérez	McLaren-Mercedes	60	+38.306	13	4
9	9	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	60	+46.821	11	2
10	11	Nico Hülkenberg	Sauber-Ferrari	60	+49.892	10	1
11	14	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	60	+53.771	12
12	19	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	60	+56.975	6
13	15	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	60	+57.738	15
14	12	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	60	+1:00.160	14
15	16	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	60	+1:01.929	18
16	17	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	59	+1 lap	17
17	20	Charles Pic	Caterham-Renault	59	+1 lap	22
18	21	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham-Renault	59	+1 lap	20
19	23	Max Chilton	Marussia-Cosworth	59	+1 lap	21
Ret	18	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	24	Hydraulics	16
Ret	22	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Cosworth	23	Engine	19
Ret	4	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	3	Gearbox	7

Next up is the Hungarian Grand Prix, another race which Vettel has not won! Will Vettel end his win less streak in Hungary or will Mercedes, Ferrari or Lotus spring a surprise? Lets wait and watch!

There will be a three day test from July 17th to 19th. This was supposed to be a young drivers test but the FIA and teams have agreed to let race drivers take part in order to help Pirelli develop and bring new and safer tires to the next race. 

2013 German Grand Prix Preview

After an eventful British Grand Prix last weekend, the Formula 1 teams quickly pack up and head to Germany for round 9 out of 19 at the legendary Nurburgring circuit! Lets talk a look at whats being spoken about going into this weekend's race!

Tires tires tires!

After 4 major blow outs during the race, and atleast two slow punctures that some drivers reported after the race, Pirelli came under a lot of criticism for such an incident which hasn't been seen in the recent past! The FIA and Pirelli were quick to react and changed the rules for this month's young drivers test, where teams can now test the cars with their race drivers. All in a hope to make sure such dangerous incidents do not occur again. The safety of the drivers is of the atmost importance to teams and the FIA. This is a great move in order to solve the tyre crises.

Pirelli claim that there were many reasons that caused the blow outs including low tyre pressures, sharp kerbs and high loads and putting tires on the wrong side of the car. Pirelli have put together a plan to solve such incidents. The first of this involves bringing tires with Kevlar belts that were tested during the Canadian Grand Prix rather than the tires that used steel structures at the Silverstone circuit.

From Hungary onwards, Pirelli will be bringing newer tires that combine the characteristics of the 2012 tires along with the performance of the 2013 tires.

Sebastian Vettel's July Jinx:

Three time World Champion Sebastian Vettel has never won a Grand Prix in the month of July. Coincidentally he celebrates his birthday on the 3rd of July! Also he hasn't won him home GP. This weekend Vettel will be looking to end this jinx just like he did by winning the Canadian Grand Prix for the first time last month.






Track:

The new Nurburgring track has 16 turns in total. It has a great combination of slow to medium speed corners and quite a few high speed straights! Drivers spend 60 percent of the lap on full throttle. To get in a good lap teams need to have the right speed with high downforce that will let their drivers push to the limit.

Pirelli will be bringing the modified Medium and Soft tires this weekend.

This weekend there will be two DRS zones, one on the start/finish straight and the other on the fast right hander between turns 11 and 13. The NGK Chicane at the end of the second DRS zones will give drivers the best opportunity to overtake

The weather this weekend looks warmer than it was at last weekend's British GP. There is a chance of a wet Friday as showers are predicted. Temperatures predicted for the rest of the weekend are around 25 degrees Celsius!


4 drivers namely Vettel, Rosberg, Sutil and Hulkenburg will be racing at home this weekend. Two of them surely have a good chance of winning so the German fans are in for a treat! The Mercedes team will surely have a lot of support after this being their home race of some sorts!

Sunday's race will be run over 60 laps and for sure will be a treat to watch! Have a great weekend! 

2013 British Grand Prix Review- Rosberg wins a dramatic race at Silverstone!

Round 8 out of 19! Time for the British Grand Prix! Only one of two races to have been featured in every Formula 1 season! There sure is something magical about the race. The name Silverstone circuit speaks for itself! What a circuit with high speed corners! Lets take a look at how the racing weekend panned out!

Practice:
FP1 was almost washed out! With only half the grid setting times there was not much to talk about. The session was topped by Torro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo who was looking to impress the RBR team for their 2nd seat next year after Webber's retirement!  FP2 started on a drying track! The drivers came out and tested the prototype tires along with the usual hard and mediums for the weekend! Lotus tested out the Double DRS system, which is said to give up to 10kmph advantage on the straights! The session was topped by Rosberg in his quick Mercedes! Massa put his Ferrari into the wall, on the inside of Stowe, for the third Grand Prix in succession!  FP3 on Saturday started with clear skies and the teams were getting ready for Qualifying! The two Mercedes cars finished on top followed by the two Bulls!

The FIA President along with the Marshals and drivers observed a minute's silence in honor of Mark Robinson, the marshal who lost his life after the Canadian Grand Prix!

Qualifying:

Q1 saw the usual suspects fall out! Apart from the two Marussias and Caterhams, Gutierrez and Bottas did not make the cut! Ferrari looked like they were having a tough weekend at this point! Q2 saw the two Mclarens drop out along with Massa's Ferrari! It was turning out to be a disastrous weekend for the Brazilian. Vergne, Maldonado and Hulkenburg dropped out! Q3 saw a really good fight for pole between the two Mercedes cars with Hamilton coming out on top! They locked out the front row! The bulls were right behind them! Alonso had a disappointing qualifying and wasn't happy at all! Di Resta, Ricciardo and Sutil impressed after qualifying in 5th, 6th and 7th respectively! Hamilton was elated to be on top in front of his home crowd!

After qualifying Di Resta's car was found to be underweight in the post qualifying checks! This demoted him to last place! A very disappointing result after a great qualifying!

Race:

German driver Nico Rosberg won the British Grand Prix this year which turned out to be one of the most dramatic races seen in the recent past! Rosberg was up there all through the races and capitalized on others failures!

At the start everything seemed fine for Hamilton, who headed the field for the first 8 laps, but then a rear-left tire failure resulted in the Briton being dropped to the tail end of the field! This was not all, two laps later Massa suffered a similar result when his rear left blew up into the entry of the Wellignton straight! A few laps later and again there was a similar rear-left tire failure, this time for Vergne! The debris were too much that the Safety car had to be brought out!

In the mean time Vettel, who made up one place at the start, was having a clear lead from Rosberg! The safety car brought the bunch back together! Adrian Sutil was up into 3rd at this point!

Vettel's teammate Webber had a bad start and dropped back to 15th after a incident with Grosjean at the start! He along with Hamilton started making up places!

After the safety car was back in, the race restarted and was going great with Rosberg closing in on Vettel but then on lap 42, Sebastian Vettel suffered a gearbox failure and stopped on the start/finish straight! A big blow to him and his team after a great race! This put Rosberg into the lead with Raikkonen and Sutil behind him!


Massa, who had made up the most number of places after the start, was disappointed that the tire failure put him back. He made a late race charge after the safety car went back and finished in 6th!

In the closing stages of the race, Webber was going all guns blazing and he passed everyone in his sight. He finished just 7 tenths behind Rosberg! He set the fastest lap of the race on the very last lap! A great race for the Australian considering his early mishap!

Alonso and Hamilton too had great final stints. Both of them were moving up the field from 8th and 9th! Alonso managed 3rd while Hamilton bagged 4th! A great race for Alonso after starting in 9th! Hamilton started in 1st and finished in 4th! He surely wont be happy with that, then again it could have been much  worse!

Raikkonen and Sutil who looked set for a podium suffered tire degradation and were over taken by the rest! They finished in 5th and 7th! Sutil's teammate and home hero Di Resta made up 12 places to finish in 9th! Another great performance from the young driver! Hulkenburg was the last of the points scoring drivers!

Late in the race Perez suffered his second rear left tire failure of the weekend and 4th victim of the day! He later retired due to extensive floor damage! His teammate Button failed to score any points! Their season seems to be getting worse!

Willams, who are celebrating their 600th GP this weekend, finished in 11th and 12th and are still yet to score points this season!

Kimi Raikkonen manged to set the new record for the most consecutive races in the points! He doesn't really care about the records! He needs a better car from Lotus or for sure he will be off to RBR to replace Webber!

After the race Rosberg was reprimanded for going to fast in a yellow flag zone!

A major talking point during and after the race was how so many tires could fail in a single event! This could have been one of the most dangerous days in recent racing history where we saw tires going out! The teams were unsure what caused this! Some suggested it has got to do something with the kerbs on turn 4 but again if it was the kerb, it should have resulted the in previous sessions too!

Many drivers called this dangerous and Race Director Charlie Whiting admitting that the race could have been red flagged on safety grounds!

The FIA have called for an emergency meeting to sort this out and make sure something like this doesn't happen again! Lets hope Pirelli find out what went wrong and fix it because this is just unacceptable! Pirelli claim this isn't because of the new construction of the tires but nothing can be ruled out at this point!

Rosberg got a great birthday present while Vettel will be looking to win his home race next weekend at the Nurburgring and celebrate his own birthday in style!

Have a great week!

Results:

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Points
1	9	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	52	1:32:59.456	2	25
2	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	52	+0.765 secs	4	18
3	3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	52	+7.124 secs	9	15
4	10	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	52	+7.756 secs	1	12
5	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	52	+11.257 secs	8	10
6	4	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	52	+14.573 secs	11	8
7	15	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	52	+16.335 secs	6	6
8	19	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	52	+16.543 secs	5	4
9	14	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	52	+17.943 secs	21	2
10	11	Nico Hülkenberg	Sauber-Ferrari	52	+19.709 secs	14	1
11	16	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	52	+21.135 secs	15
12	17	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	52	+25.094 secs	16
13	5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	52	+25.969 secs	10
14	12	Esteban Gutiérrez	Sauber-Ferrari	52	+26.285 secs	17
15	20	Charles Pic	Caterham-Renault	52	+31.613 secs	18
16	22	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Cosworth	52	+36.097 secs	19
17	23	Max Chilton	Marussia-Cosworth	52	+67.660 secs	20
18	21	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham-Renault	52	+67.759 secs	22
19	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	51	Gearbox	7
20	6	Sergio Pérez	McLaren-Mercedes	46	Puncture	13
Ret	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	41	Gearbox	3
Ret	18	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	35	Puncture	12