Tyre strategy can be fun!
The drivers all got very sweary this weekend, and whilst we all know that swearing is neither big nor clever, it’s included here because I always report 100% accurate facts and it’s definitely not because I think drivers swearing on the radio is really funny. The one thing that didn’t have any swearing was Louis Delétraz’s Twitch stream from the paddock, although his description of the COVID-19 test was perhaps even more offensive. Poor Louis, he looked genuinely disturbed.
Practice: A montage of spins
There were spots of rain at the start of Practice, facilitating a number of spins, namely Sato and Ticktum. The track was subsequently officially designated as “wet” and everyone decided to stay in the pits, until halfway through when Markelov apparently just thought “fuck it” and went out to do a lap.
Nissany and Alesi, meanwhile, had also decided to go out and resurrected their battle from last week, fighting over track position despite basically being the only cars on track.
By the end of the session, only nine drivers had bothered to set a time, so Alesi got the honour of being the fastest.
Qualifying: “For f**k’s sake”
The rain continued, but harder, for qualifying. The expectation was that the rain would get even worse (it did not), so everyone queued at the end of the pitlane to get out as fast as they could. Thanks to the lack of running in Practice, most of the drivers hadn’t yet got their wet-weather spins out of the way, so five minutes into the session we got the first red flag, courtesy of Samaia.
All worried about more rain incoming (it wasn’t), the drivers once again queued for the restart. When the green flag (light) was waved (turned on), it was Mazepin who took his turn for a spin. Delétraz, who also seemed to be struggling to stay on track, set the fastest lap, but this was soon beaten by Ghiotto and newly emerging wet-weather specialist Lundgaard. These two basically then traded top times with each other, sitting one second ahead of everyone else on the timing board. In case anyone was in any doubt, Lundgaard confirmed his car was “really, really good, really good”. However, Schumacher channelled his rain-meister genes and threw himself into the mix as well, and just as I was writing that no one else had a chance against these three, Ticktum jumped up to second. Never underestimate a Brit in the rain, and just to prove that point, Ilott then took provisional pole.
With only six minutes to go, everyone was heading out for their final runs, except Ghiotto, whose tyre was stuck on the car. The mechanics were using whatever they could find around the garage to try and get it off. It took literally minutes. Good thing this wasn’t a race pitstop, although they still had the pressure of knowing that the murderous eyes of Ghiotto were watching their every move from under the visor. Intense.
Also in a last-minute panic was Matsushita, who spun, as did Sato and Daruvala, who ended up in the gravel trap, bringing out the red flag. “For fuck’s sake,” he complained, which is basically what we were all thinking.
With only around four minutes left on the clock, Race Control seemingly decided there wasn’t enough time to get any more good flying laps in and so it was decided that the session would not be restarted. For fuck’s sake Daruvala. That left Ilott on pole, with Ghiotto second and Zhou third.
As is fast becoming common practice for F1 TV, instead of uploading the post-qualifying press conference, they uploaded last year’s instead. I’m obviously not going to read the online transcript because who even reads anymore, so let’s just pretend that Ilott was feeling a bit lucky but happy with his pace, Ghiotto was annoyed because he knew he could have been on pole and Zhou has become so miserable at how his championship is going that he just stared blankly.
Feature Race: “For f**k’s sake” (again)
After Qualifying, we found out that Trident had fallen foul of the same regulation as Charouz last week, by putting the wrong tyres on the cars when going from the F2 paddock to the pitlane. Shame on you Trident. One-place grid penalties dropped Sato and Nissany down to 20th and 21st.
Pole-man Ilott made a good start, while Ticktum, Schumacher and Lundgaard all passed Ghiotto and Zhou to take second, third and fourth places. (Actually everyone one passed Zhou who ended up in eighth).
After Trident’s terrible qualifying and grid penalties they had probably thought their weekend couldn’t get much worse, but Nissany made sure that it could, when, out of nowhere, he came flying into the corner, completely out of control, and punted teammate Sato off the track like he was playing skittles. Nissany was out, Sato was out and the Safety Car was also out.
Nissany: “Sorry.”
Sato: “For fuck’s sake”
Happy team.
As the Safety Car came back in, Ghiotto was determined to make up for his bad start and began to make amends by passing Lundgaard, but as Lundgaard thought about trying to take the place back, Ghiotto moved slightly and Lundgaard ran into the back of him, getting a puncture in the process. For fuck’s sake Ghiotto. “If that wasn’t dangerous driving then I don’t know what is,” Lundgaard declared as he dropped down the field, straight into the path of his teammate Armstrong who, while trying to avoid hitting Lundgaard, managed to run into Markelov instead, who then went flying into the wall. Safety Car. To add further insult to injury for Armstrong, he then had to wait patiently in the pits while the team worked on fixing Lundgaard’s car first, which turned out to be a total waste of time as a few laps later he got stuck in fourth gear and had to retire. For fuck’s sake.
Up front, Ticktum pitted as soon as the Safety Car came in, forcing Ilott to pit a lap later to defend against Ticktum and his fast new tyres. Several laps later, after most people had made their mandatory pitstops, Schumacher had managed to jump Ticktum for what would become second place once all the pitstops had sorted the order out. Ticktum was regretting that early stop as he had “absolutely no grip at all,” and it wasn’t long before Ghiotto and Zhou both passed him. Schumacher, on the other hand, had no such problems, as he went flying past Ilott for the net lead of the race.
Meanwhile, last week’s star Yuki Tsunoda was in the pits with a broken front wing, having run into Matsushita. Anxiety rising over his junior Red Bull status again. Gelael was also in the pits, hooked up to the laptop, so it must have been serious, and just to make it extra fun for DAMS, Gelael’s teammate Ticktum was still having trouble, describing his experience as “like I’m driving something between a boat and a rally car.” Ilott was probably also regretting being baited into an early pitstop by Ticktum, as Ghiotto and Zhou were now bearing down on him.
As the race went on, it was not just the early stoppers who were having tyre trouble. Basically everyone realised that the tyres were awful and that they might never make it to the end. However, once over this initial shock, attention suddenly turned to Robert Shwartzman, who was technically in the lead, but on the alternative strategy and therefore yet to stop. Collectively, the realisation dawned that while they all trundled round on their rubbish tyres, he was about to stop for some actual good, fast tyres and then he would be rapid. Suddenly everyone was doing their best to pick up the pace, at least as best they could despite the fact that you could visibly see large chunks of rubber flying off all over the place.
With less than ten laps to go, Shwartzman came into the pits, and we prepared for the battle we’d all been waiting for since the 2020 Prema team line up was announced, the Ferrari Driver Academy showdown between Schumacher and Shwartzman. Shwartzman came flying out of the pits in third place, locked up, let Ghiotto past, passed Ghiotto again, passed Ilott and then set off to close the four second gap to Schumacher. It. Was. Tense. Would he be able to catch Schumacher in time? Would he be able to pass Schumacher? Yes and yes. In fact, he caught and passed Schumacher so fast that I think we all feel pretty stupid ever expecting it to be a contest. Schumacher had no chance. Alternative strategy for the win.
Following his late pitstop, Mazepin, who had started 16th, was now up to third, and with the Shwartzman/Schumacher battle long over (Shwartzman was already 15 seconds ahead), Mazepin also breezed by Schumacher, taking second place. And so it ended, with Shwartzman taking the win, Mazepin in second and Schumacher in third, and we were treated to some lovely singing by Shwartzman’s engineer Mario. Ferrari bigwigs Mattia Binotto and Laurent Mekies were also there to cheer on their protégé Shwartzman. Let’s face it, it would be the only celebrating they would get to do all weekend year.
Post-race, Shwartzman as ever gave an excellent step-by-step account of his race, “X, Y, Z happened.. and then we won!” I may stop actually watching the racing and just catch up on the detail from his interviews.
Sprint Race: “F**king unbelievable”
Sunday’s race was set to be a geek-fest, as the drivers had all chosen different tyres, which doesn’t usually happen in the Sprint Race. Which tyre would be the best choice? Would there be pitstops? Exciting stuff.
It was Ilott who was on pole again, having managed to fall all the way from pole to eighth place in the Feature Race, better luck this time Callum. The confidence of the top-three was palpable, as Ilott said he was just lucky to be there, second-place Delétraz said he was aiming to finish in the top ten, and third-place Daruvala just said he thought the race would be “interesting”, which is basically racing driver speak for “hard”.
Ilott once again got a good start, while Ghiotto made an uncharacteristically fantastic start, jumping from fifth up to second, with Delétraz dropping to third. Ticktum, on the other hand, wasn’t having any better luck than he had during the previous race, “I’ve got a problem… I don’t have any power… fucking unbelievable, unbelievable man”.
Bad luck was also raining on Tsunoda, who at some point had managed to damage his front wing again and was ordered to the pits by Race Control. His response was measured and not psychopathic at all, “What the FUCK!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?” His team’s response was to troll him on Twitter.
Things weren’t going much better for Delétraz who, after the terrible experience of the medium tyres in the Feature Race, had opted for the softs, which didn’t seem to be any fun either, as he was overtaken by Schumacher, Mazepin and Shwartzman.
Then, all of a sudden, there was flurry of pitstops, but everyone knows track position is king, so obviously the leader wouldn’t pit… oh no wait… Ilott pitted from the lead, leaving Ghiotto up front. With all the random tyre choices and pitstop strategies happening, the only thing that was certain was that Ghiotto was 35 seconds in the lead on old tyres and Ilott was second on new tyres. With less than eight laps left to go, cue last lap shootout for the win.
Alesi, who had also chosen not to pit, was in third, but clearly his tyre preserving skills were not quite up to the standard of Ghiotto’s and he was soon overtaken by everyone, leaving Schumacher in third place.
With two laps left to go, Ilott was four seconds a lap faster than Ghiotto and looming large in Ghiotto’s mirrors. However, unfortunately for Ilott, the Hungaroring was just one corner too short, and Ghiotto crossed the line to victory, declaring it “the most stressful race I’ve ever done in my career.” Ilott seemed happy with second, given the weird tyre circumstances, and Schumacher was much happier with his third place than he had been the previous day, having now scored a double podium and solid points for the weekend.
With all the rookies ousted from the podium, it was like F2 in 2019 all over again, expect for Zhou. Where was Zhou? (He was eighth, poor Zhou).
F**king championship standings
Following his Feature Race win, it’s no surprise that Shwartzman is still leading the championship (81 points). Also unsurprisingly, following his sad, sad weekend, Lundgaard (third place, 43 points) had dropped behind Ilott (second place, 63 points). Schumacher (39 points) has launched his way up the leaderboard to fourth place and Ticktum (38 points) is in fifth.