(Moderators – I wrote this in the days just before Jules Bianchi passed. If it feels inappropriate to post something fairly light-hearted now, please feel free to delete this… RIP, Jules.)
PRE-RACE RACE RECAP – HUNGARY 2015
NEW RACE FORMAT LIVENS SHOW
Although there wasn’t 100% consensus, the general attitude following this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix seemed to be that the new ‘Hell, we’ll try anything’ two-race format received a thumbs-up from fans, who felt they were treated to more racing action than they’d settled for of late.
As expected, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg took the top two spots in Saturday afternoon’s two-car Mercedes portion of the Grand Prix, with Hamilton narrowly beating Rosberg to the flag after some mid-race confusion over team orders. Rosberg was less than ebullient over this in the post-race press conference, saying “I can understand the need for some team management here. After all, Lewis and I almost took each other off in the first corner, and then what would the viewers do for the next hour and a half? But come on, it’s not like we had Vettel breathing down our necks. He doesn’t even get in the car until tomorrow!” When asked about this, Niki Lauda replied, “Sure, a 24-hour gap to third place is slightly more than what we’re used to, but that’s not our problem. We’re not in the business of handing points to teams that can’t get their scheiss together and give us a race.”
That out of the way, the stage was set for Sunday’s Everybody Else race. The starting grid for this was two-by-two all the way down, with teammates on every row, and, in a last-minute development, Nico Hulkenberg slotting in next to Sergio Perez on a ten-speed bicycle he had borrowed from someone in the pits, his Force India’s onboard management system having been catastrophically hacked by a Chinese kindergarten student.
Despite harsh warnings to drivers from team bosses all up and down the grid, the start was somewhat less orderly than one would hope, with teammates wantonly punting one another into the scenery at virtually every turn, so that by the end of the first lap only one-third of the cars remained on the track. A restart was signaled, and cars were dragged from the shrubbery and back onto the tarmac as stewards began handing down penalties. The most creative of these fell into Team Lotus’ lap, both Grosjean and Maldonado receiving simultaneous reverse drive-throughs for having continued to ram into each other long after they had egressed the track.
With several armed team principals now positioned around the first few corners, the second start went off more smoothly than the first, and the race settled into a battle between Williams and Ferrari, with the two Toro Rossos and Ricciardo’s Red Bull not far adrift, and Hulkenberg steadily working his way through the field after a slow start on the ten-speed. Every conceivable contingency having been calculated to the nanosecond, the pit stops had little effect on the running at the top, but Perez, in 11th, was a bit chagrined to be met with Grosjean and Maldonado blazing backwards out of the pit lane entry, having just served their penalty. Forced to take evasive action, he slid into the Sauber pit where all four wheels were swapped out before anyone even thought to say “Hey!” Perez waved and took off to rejoin the race, but was compromised by the sudden departure of all four wheels from the car due to incompatible wheel nuttery, making him the day’s fourth retirement, with the two Manors and Kvyat’s Red Bull still beached somewhere out in the landscape. Fortunately no one was injured by the wheels bouncing all over pit lane, though one wheel did eventually wobble out onto the track, where it kept rolling and passed both McLaren/Hondas.
As Sauber and Force India argued over which team should receive credit for what was shaping up to be a 14th-place finish for the errant wheel, the race wound down to a relatively anticlimactic conclusion. Felipe Bottas stood alone on the third-place podium step, spraying champagne on photographs of Hamilton and Rosberg, who had left the venue the previous evening. Vettel was credited with fourth even though he’d been overtaken on the last lap by a furiously-pedaling Hulkenberg, who was later disqualified after Ferrari lodged a protest because the Force India/Schwinn driver hadn’t used the option tires at all in the race.
“For God’s sake, they don’t fit on the stinkin bike!” reasoned Hulkenberg, but the protest was upheld and Force India left Hungary with no points. Valtteri Massa was fifth in the second Williams, followed by Ricciardo, Sainz and Verstappen in the Toro Rossi, then Grosjean in ninth. Nasr, screeching around on bare rims in the Sauber, took the final point after a long battle with Maldonado, who was forced to drive the second half of the race backwards, his Lotus stuck in reverse since his drive-through penalty.
“Forward, backward, it’s all the same to me,” said the Venezuelan velociraptor after the race. “Though I will say, the aerodynamic differences do jack up the adrenaline a little…”
Full results will be posted sometime Monday, after the two updated McLaren/Hondas complete the race distance and receive the checkered flag.
After Hungary the points table shows, well, basically the same thing it has all season, and it appears that it would be foolish to expect any major shakeups there in our lifetime. Now there’s a four-year gap until the next race, at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. There was talk of trying a reverse grid there, with the cars facing the wrong way in their slots at the start, but that’s been nixed now because of complaints that it would give Maldonado an unfair advantage, especially into Eau Rouge, so the jury’s still out on what new twist they’ll come up with for that event.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS KIMI RAIKKONEN?
Not only notably absent from the points in today’s race, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen hasn’t been seen anywhere near the Hungaroring since his first pit stop.
“We gave him a new set of softs, sent him back out, and POOF!, the sucker vanishes into thin air,” said the left-rear wheelman after the podium ceremony. “He never came back round, and what we want to know, yup, is where the hell’s he going with our car? We had brief radio contact, but now we think he’s jimmied the electrics. The telemetry’s all whack, the GPS shows him in Oklahoma, and when we try to reestablish radio contact all we hear is Neil Young singing ‘Cowgirl in the Sand’.”
There have been breaking reports of “some unimaginably fast red whatever streaking west along the Danube,” and it’s thought that if that is, in fact, Raikkonen, he’s likely trying to get as much seat time in the SF15-T as he can, now that the world press seems to have decided that he’ll be ousted from Maranello at the end of the current season.
effingayone.moc has obtained a transcript of part of the aforementioned radio contact, thought to be the last known communication anyone’s had with Raikkonen thus far:
Ferrari – Kimi? Kimi, can you hear me?
Raikkonen – La la la la la la la la la…
Ferrari – Kimi, we’d like you to return with the car immediately.
Raikkonen – Leave me alone. I know what I am doing.
Ferrari – Kimi! Now you listen to me. We-
Raikkonen – La la la la la la la la la…
Ferrari – Kimi, we know where you live.
Neil Young – O-old enough now to change your na-a-a-ame…
Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has hopped into a helicopter in the hope of intercepting Raikkonen at the German border, though it’s hardly a given that he’ll beat the Flying Finn there, if indeed that’s where he is bound.
Insiders suggest that this current excursion will have done little to augment Kimi’s bargaining position for next year’s seat on the team.
HULK HOSED AGAIN
Should the second Ferrari be recovered and Raikkonen yanked out by his nose hairs, the question remains as to who might next occupy the prodigal prancing horse. In the Where’s Kimi? press conference more than one person was heard to wonder areallyloud whether Hulkenberg’s stock may have gone up in Ferrari’s eyes, now that he had beaten their number one driver on a ten year old bicycle…
“Look, we’ve always known that Nico’s a brilliant driver,” said the Ferrari spokesmeerkat. “But, like Sebastian, he smiles a lot, and we feel that to have two smilers on our team would keep us from fully realizing our marketing potential. There’s a lot of grumps out there, y’know, and we want them to buy our hoohah too, so we’re looking for a real gloomer to fill that second seat.” This threw silly-season speculation wide open, as now there are suddenly any number of candidates for the coveted crimson cockpit.
Hulkenberg, standing nearby, just smiled, shook his head, and walked off, muttering “Go Kimi!”
A short while later someone approached Hulkenberg in the pits, holding out a phone and saying, “It’s Schwinn – they’d like a word with you.” The Force India driver smiled and kept walking, but Button, who’d pitted for a quick snack, leaped from the car and trotted over, saying “I’ll take that call!”
