Less than a week since the fall of the flag in Germany and the blog is here once more in preparation for the next thrilling instalment of the 2012 season. Well I say thrilling but it is the inevitable point in the championship when heads into eastern Europe and to the Hungaroring, one of the few tracks on the calendar famous for being appallingly dull. Usually the race of the season where very little is expected to happen, the narrow dusty track is cursed with the problem of being a nice place to drive around on but the racing it produces is negligible most of the time.
However if the track action does get a little tiresome we do have another large scale distraction gracing out little corner of the world in the form of the Olympics, which doesn't seem to include any motor-racing for some reason. In fact it only seems to include sports which are only either really hard, or really expensive to pursue, hence why the blog isn't representing the island at anything. If there was a medal available for writing a whole bunch of nonsense on the internet then perhaps, but everyone who has access to the internet is usually guilty of that. Because here in this corner of the room, the blog would like to have a go, at what who knows, but it would be brilliant. So we have to resort to the next best thing, well a couple of tiers down the hierarchy, but a long way up from hiding in this corner. As the blog is indeed heading to the Olympics if only in a spectoral capacity, and not all the way down to see the scary southerners. Instead travelling east into Newcastle to see some group stage football. The blog doesn't really understand football, but given the scale of the whole thing it does seem like a rather good idea.
That does bring us to one problematic consequence of this little venture, is that the post-race review post may have to wait until Monday as of course at the time I would normally be writing it I will be watching Japan play Morocco and then Spain playing Honduras. Therefore not returning back to headquarters until really late in the evening virtually the morning and no writing will be taken care of at that time of night. It might make the report a little sketchy and out of date but these things don't really come around that often and certainly not to this corner of the world. Anyway this is blog HQ and that means were are here now for motor-racing purposes and it is time to bring on this week's track.
The Track
 |
| credit to the FIA for the graphic |
How much of that can we put on the layout, well perhaps there is a fair amount of blame to be placed there, because the flowing nature of the lap does make it difficult to pass and the abrasive surface will exacerbate the build-up of marbles offline. But although it makes the racing a little, or more than often a lot, dull in places - the track is a nice place to drive on the simulator. As one corner flows into the next with the exception for the chicane at the top of the track. Now I like a good chicane as much as the next person, but this isn't one, it fits for some other car types, ran some laps in a touring car and it wasn't so problematic or clumsy. Yet in a high powered formula one car, even the blogmobile struggles to get through without losing mechanical grip.
The only other problems with the track, lie with the opening and concluding two corners at either end of the track. Because they seem like a contrast to the rest of the lap, almost as if they were somewhat of an afterthought, and don't exist as a challenge to the drivers, but tempts drivers into carrying that little bit extra through the apex and drifting offline leading to being trapped in the vast fields of marbles and generic debris.
One place where marbles and dust isn't a problem is in the virtual world of the simulator, so driving the blogmobile round the track is a little more forgiving, where the track traditionally behaves like a street track in race conditions I have more freedom in the virtual realm. That is the cue to release this week's video which returns to the traditional format since the Hungaroring has remained roughly the same since its introduction to the calendar barring some minor corner re-profiling. So here it is.
What to expect
Well given the nature of the track we may as well print out the qualifying result as the final standings where overtaking is a long forgotten concept at the Hungaroring. However through tyre degradation things may change this season, allowing cars to have enough of a time difference to encourage some position changes, but that is wishful thinking. This does make the single lap pace on Saturday so much more important which could play more into the hands of Red Bull and Mercedes who have demonstrated stronger performances in qualifying rather than the race. Conversely it could hurt the likes of McLaren and Lotus who race a lot better than they qualify at the moment, that could be minimised for Lotus if the track temperature remains high across the weekend as their car appears to be very temperature sensitive working much better in warmer climates.
The mid-field this weekend will be exceptionally competitive and be much closer to the front of the grid to the point where a surprise winner from this part of the grid would not be too much of a surprise as Sauber and Force India were strong in Germany and that pace could be translated through into this race. At the other end of the scale, as the track is harder to overtake on there is a slightly large risk of drivers trying moves out of frustration or impatience. Which could be a problem for someone like Pastor Maldonado who could put his recent streak of not hitting anyone under threat.
Naturally down at the back there really isn't that much of a need to predict what is going on, as the three teams have developed their own permanent hierarchy. Caterham are in a division of their own, roughly 1s behind Torro Rosso ahead and a similar distance in front of the other two teams at the bottom of the grid. The static nature of this race isn't conjusive to the high amount of randomness needed to bump them up anywhere near the points positions. Even in the unpredictable events in Valencia only saw Petrov temporarily hold 10th while driver were out of sync in the pit stop phase, so scores in Hungary are not really on the cards.
Blog predictions
This is time for the blog to demonstrate how little the blog knows about the forever changing realm of current form and relative pace across the field.
- Hamilton
- Vettel
- Alonso
- Raikkonen
- Webber
- Button
- Grosjean
- Kobayashi
- Rosberg
- Di Resta
Qualifying Battle
- Red Bull - Vettel
- McLaren - Hamilton
- Ferrari - Alonso
- Lotus - Raikkonen
- Sauber - Kobayashi
- Force India - Di Resta
- Williams - Maldonado
- Torro Rosso - Ricciardo
- Caterham - Kovalainen
- Marussia - Glock
- HRT - De La Rosa
So there we go then, on the eve of the opening ceremony for the Olympic games blog HQ has set all the preparations for the other important sporting event this weekend across on the other side of Europe, well as far east on the continent the series visits this season. At the conclusion of the opening post from the weekend and one of the few that will be on time due to the events and the fact the the blog is going to the Olympics this weekend after the race, I shall bid you all farewell until after qualifying on Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment