Hungarian GP: Race results and Notes

Panasonic Toyota Racing will leave Budapest with three points courtesy of Ralf Schumacher following today's incident-packed Hungarian Grand Prix. After the cool conditions of the first two days, the Hungarian weather had one more surprise for the teams on Sunday, with heavy showers ensuring that much of the race took place on a wet track. Toyota's drivers Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli started from P6 and P8 on the grid respectively with a heavy fuel load for a two-stop race. But both drivers were short of grip at the start and they lost a total of six places each on the first lap. From there it was always going to be a long, hard afternoon's work around the Hungaroring. The task was made even harder when the safety car was brought out just after both had made their first pit stops on lap 25, leaving both a lap down. The two drivers were the first to switch to dry tyres for the final stint and Ralf did well to bring the car home in 6th place. There is no testing in August so the teams will now take a mini-break before the next race at Turkey's Istanbul Park in three weeks.

Ralf Schumacher: "That was a very turbulent race and after everything that happened we are happy to take away three points. A lot of things went badly, but the rain was especially difficult at the start of the race. The track was really wet and we just could not warm up the tyres. It was like running on smooth ice and we were extremely slow so it was pretty hard work."

"As the track got drier we improved our pace and the Bridgestone standard wets worked extremely well even in dry conditions. At the moment when we decided to change to dry tyres it might have been quite risky. But it was a risk we had to take and it worked. On dry tyres we were quick and I was able to make up ground and take 6th place."

Tsutomu Tomita - Team Principal: "First of all we would like to congratulate Honda on their first win since their return to Formula 1. Here at Toyota our weekend started well and we expected a good performance in the race so I am very dissatisfied with this result. In the end it was full of action and incident and events did not play into our hands today. We had taken the risk of rain into account when we decided on our set-up yesterday so we were not too worried. But we made a poor start and we had poor grip in the wet conditions of the early stages when our lap times were worse than those of our tyre competitors. Then the safety car came at the worst possible time for us and we lost a lap compared to cars which we could have passed later in the race. So that lost us the chance to score more points. As the race went on and as it became drier over the last two stints our pace was very good. Ralf did well to finish in 6th place but Jarno was less fortunate and suffered a late engine failure. We are confident we will improve and we will continue pushing to the end of the season."

Ralf Schumacher
Car 7, Chassis TF106/10B
Race Classification: 6th
Gap: +1 lap (from race winner)
Qualifying Classification: 7th
Time: 1m20.759s (+1.160s in Q3)
Grid: 6th

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time	Points
1	J. Button	Honda	1:52:20.941	10
2	P. de la Rosa	McLaren	+ 30.837	8
3	N. Heidfeld	BMW	+ 43.822	6
4	R. Barrichello	Honda	+ 45.205	5
5	D. Coulthard	Red Bull	+ 1 laps	4
6	R. Schumacher	Toyota	+ 1 laps	3
7	F. Massa	Ferrari	+ 1 laps	2
8	M. Schumacher	Ferrari	+ 3 laps	1
9	T. Monteiro	Midland F1	+ 3 laps	0
10	C. Albers	Midland F1	+ 3 laps	0
11	S. Speed	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 4 laps	0
12	J. Trulli	Toyota	+ 5 laps	0
13	T. Sato	Super Aguri	+ 5 laps	0
Did not finish
14	R. Kubica	BMW	+ 1 laps	DSQ
15	F. Alonso	Renault	+ 19 laps	0
16	K. Räikkönen	McLaren	+ 44 laps	0
17	V. Liuzzi	Scuderia Toro Rosso	+ 45 laps	0
18	N. Rosberg	Williams	+ 51 laps	0
19	G. Fisichella	Renault	+ 52 laps	0
20	C. Klien	Red Bull	+ 63 laps	0
21	M. Webber	Williams	+ 68 laps	0
22	S. Yamamoto	Super Aguri	+ 70 laps	0

 

 

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Special congratulations for Jenson Button for his first Formula 1 win.