Not at all! Its one of the best circuits they go to in my opinion and it will be shame if its ever taken off the calendar.
For me the Hungaroring has the following positives:
-Its a "drivers circuit", i.e. its fantastic fun to drive as the corner combinations flow so well and really challenge the driver, just like Monaco, the old Nordschleife, Oulton Park, etc.
-It represents the North-Eastern European round, as many Finns, Poles, Russians, Austrians, etc don't have a GP and its in a great spot for them all.
-It has frequently thrown up a bizarre race and usually has a new race winner every year.
-Contrary to popular opinion, overtaking is fairly frequent at this circuit compared to most modern F1 circuits. It has 1 more overtaking spot than Catalunya, Monaco, Valencia and Singapore do (in theory those have 0 proper overtaking spots, though they do have frequent places).
-It has produced some very famous moments in F1 racing, e.g. Piquet overtaking Senna on the outside, Mansell taking Senna after a blinding race, Damon Hill sticking an Arrows to near-victory, Schumacher winning on a qualifying-pace 4-stop strategy...
So, going by the tradition of Hungary usually giving a new winner each year, Sebastien Vettel or Felipe Massa should be in line for a race win. Hamilton has won it most recently (07 and 09), Alonso hasn't won it for a while and Jenson so maybe them?
By the way, this circuit was another that Kobayashi proved us all wrong with the "no overtaking" tagline, considering he went from 23rd to finsh 9th here last year, and not all of those were first lap overtakes. Granted, once again we didn't see much of it sadly - just as we again didn't see how he got from 17th to 12th in the first lap last weekend. The FOM TV director needs to split the World Feed screen in two - one for the normal race, one for Kobayashi's onboard!
I also don't get the comments that the top 3 or 4 will be stuck behind each other - as if to suggest its boring! Webber/Alonso/Hamilton and Vettel/Button/Alonso were mostly just behind each other for most of the races at Nurburgring and Monaco and was it boring? Hell no! The tension of watching 3 or 4 drivers push it to the limit for race victory is one of the joys of F1! Who cares if there isn't 100 overtakes? I don't even need 1 for it be exciting.
This is the frustrating thing with DRS - it mostly takes away a lot of the tense, close battles and makes good defensive driving such as Petrov did at the Nurburgring useless. There could have been a great fight between Rosberg, Schumacher and Petrov but because of DRS, Petrov didn't stand a chance. Sure they were going to get past anyway sooner or later, but perhaps the fight might have lasted a few laps longer if DRS hadn't closed them up like that so quickly. Any gap Petrov pulled out over sectors 1 and 2 was gone for sector 3 in one lap.
But at least it hasn't affected the fights at the front, where the cars are fairly equal it seems.
Last edited: Jul 27, 2011