Tuesday, August 05, 2008 Hamilton’s great escape in the Hungarian GP By Steve Slater Special Contributor
LEWIS Hamilton might not have repeated his 2007 victory at the Hungaroring.
Nor did he score that elusive “hat trick” of three wins in a row. But I suspect that Lewis will have left Budapest with a feeling of relief, after a race which could so easily have turned into a rout of the McLaren team by Ferrari.
From the first practice session on Friday, it was obvious that tire wear and controlling “graining,” when the overheated tire tread starts to break down, would dominate the race weekend. McLaren were quickest, but their use of the tires was far more aggressive than the Ferraris.
Even after McLaren drivers Hamilton and Kovalainen had stitched up the front row of the grid in qualifying, there were a lot of behind the scene discussions between McLaren and worried Bridgestone engineers. In contrast, Ferrari, whose weakness in recent races has been an inability to get their front tires up to working temperatures fast enough, were quietly confident before the start of the race.
Their calculation was that McLaren would be forced to pit ahead of them, based on tire wear alone. All they had to do was hold station and they’d get the lead sometime.
Felipe Massa, third on the grid, wasn’t prepared to wait. A superb start saw Massa streak around the outside of both McLaren drivers to lead out of the first corner. You could almost hear him saying “revenge for Hockenheim” as he forced Hamilton onto the kerbs and back to second place.
Flawless
Massa’s drive was flawless. Once in the lead he set the fastest lap time and time again. It was a complete performance, worthy of a race winner and possibly a World Champion. Not only did he stun with his speed, he suckered Hamilton into pushing his pace too, simply to stay in touch with the flying Ferrari.
That showed a hard-edged guile to the Ferrari strategy, which paid off when Lewis simply ran his hard-worked left front tire too thin. A puncture on the 40th lap, a good 10 laps before his scheduled second pit stop, dropped him outside of the top ten.
An hour or two after the race, the Bridgestone and McLaren PR people came up with a statement saying that it was “possibly a cut sidewall due to debris.” Hmmm. I suspect a face-saving move by both parties, it is always easier to puncture a tire after you wear it paper thin!
Another day, another fightback, it seemed for Hamilton who duly delivered as he charged back up the field to claim vital four championship points for fifth place. But one wonders, how much of his trouble today was self-inflicted?
Three times World Champion Sir Jackie Stewart once said that real champions know when to drive slowly. The fast, but precocious Hamilton perhaps could heed that advice.
It seems that his teammate Heikki Kovalainen did. Dropped to third place at the start of the opening lap, Heikki knew the limitations of his car and stayed within them.
It paid off. He would ultimately inherit his maiden Formula One win after Massa was robbed in the cruelest possible way.
Even Heikki admitted he felt a pang of guilt at his victory: “I feel sorry for Felipe because he drove a great race. But this is a great moment for me, something I’ve been targeting for many years. Hopefully, this victory will be the first of many.”
Massa was in control of the race and was set to be a worthy winner, until the Prancing Horse fell at the final hurdle. Three laps from the chequered flag the Ferrari V-8 expired in a plume of smoke, leaving Massa banging his helmet in frustration.
It happened completely without warning, without giving the slightest indication,” said the Brazilian. “Unfortunately, racing can
be a cruel sport. We had given it our all, but these things can happen. Now we must not give up.”
(Steve Slater is the expert half of the popular F1 commentary duo on Star Sports. Slater is a veritable encyclopedia of motor racing and has been involved in the sport at many levels including as journalist, race-organizer, radio broadcaster, and now commentator).
Spoken like a champion elect? Well it looks increasingly as if the 2008 championship is turning into a two-horse race between Massa and Hamilton. Kimi Raikkonen cruised into third place behind Toyota podium debutant Timo Glock, more by luck than effort.
Raikkonen increasingly reminds me of the South African driver Jody Scheckter, who won the 1979 World Championship for Ferrari and then, as much to his bewilderment as anyone else, lost his motivation.
“I found I was waking up in the night and no longer thinking about understeer and oversteer” Jody once said. He completed a lackluster 1980 season for Ferrari before hanging up his crash helmet for good. I see similar signs of disinterest in Kimi. I just hope that I am wrong!
Meanwhile, Hamilton now has a three-week break before Valencia, but I don’t think he, nor the McLaren engineers, will be relaxing for a moment. In fact Lewis’s problem isn’t a lack of effort. It may he is simply be trying too hard.
Steve Slater is the expert half of the popular F1 commentary duo on STAR Sports. Slater is a veritable encyclopedia of motor racing and has been involved in the sport at many levels including as journalist, race-organizer, radio broadcaster, and now commentator.
