The Hindu : Sport / Racing : Motor : A crucial race of the season

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 06, 2006

Sport

Sport - Racing : Motor

A crucial race of the season

Issues such as cooling, high downforce, tyre degradation are of vital importance , writes Narain Karthikeyan

The Hungarian Grand Prix has all the potential to be probably the most crucial race of the 2006 Formula One season.

Hungarian motor racing can be traced back to the 1930s, when races were staged in a park in the middle of Budapest. The only pre-war Hungarian GP was held in 1936 and won by Tazio Nuvolari in an Alfa Romeo. Exactly 50 years elapsed before the race was held for the first time in an Eastern Bloc country. The novelty value and subsidised admission costs helped attract an enormous crowd of almost 200,000 for the historic 1986 event. The site was a new purpose-built circuit in open countryside 12 miles north-east of Budapest. The project cost approximately £5 million.

The circuit's situation in a natural bowl affords superb viewing opportunities for spectators. However, they don't often get to see much action because the sinuous layout — sometimes described as `Monaco without the houses' — conspires against overtaking and tends to produce processional races. The 1986 race was won by Nelson Piquet after a titanic battle with fellow Brazilian Ayrton Senna. Piquet sealed the victory with an audacious and skilful piece of overtaking around the outside of Senna at the first corner, which saw him hold a lurid oversteering slide all the way through.

Prolific winner

As is the case with almost every single race, the most prolific winner at this track is Michael Schumacher, who has won here in 1994, 1998, 2001 and 2004, with a total of eight pole positions. The track also holds special memories for the reigning World champion Fernando Alonso, as this was the venue of his maiden F-1 victory in 2003, making him the youngest ever GP winner at 22 years and 26 days, finally eclipsing Bruce McLaren's record, which had stood for 43 years. Arguably the most impressive performance in the race's 20-year history has come from Michael Schumacher in 1998. Running third behind the McLarens of David Coulthard and title rival Mika Hakkinen and with seemingly no chance of winning, master strategist Ross Brawn switched the Ferrari star from a two-stop to a three-stop strategy. All Michael had to do was find a bundle of time in less than 20 laps to get in front! In typical Schumacher-esque style, he did exactly that, to take not just one of the best wins of his career, but one of the greatest F-1 victories of all time.

Similar to Monaco

Being so similar to the streets of Monaco, the characteristics of the track are fairly similar, posing similar challenges to the teams. The only major difference in the track surface is that it is quite smooth here, as compared with the bumpy nature of the streets of Monaco. Issues such as cooling, high downforce, tyre degradation are of vital importance. One effect of these is that the car weight/ fuel load is more significant on lap time than at any of the last few races. This weight effect at the Hungaroring is more significant because of the proportion of time spent cornering. This combined with the short pit lane certainly makes a three pit-stop strategy the most likely.

Gameplan

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport