Sebastian Vettel secured victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix, despite car issues that hampered his pace. As others were unable to overtake, Raikkonen finished a close second, followed by Valtteri Bottas for Mercedes.
Importantly, at this point last year, Hamilton already knew he would probably have to suffer engine penalties later in the year.ChrisDanger wrote: ↑18 Jul 2017, 17:55Interestingly, Hamilton went into this round last year one point behind in the championship after not leading all year, won the race, but then went on to not win the championship.
Could history repeat itself?
I don't know why everyone is saying it's a Mercedes track. Ok it's maybe one of the track where it's the most difficult to beat Lewis nevertheless it's a hot temperature track, with not so many hard braking point, not so many high speed sector, and not so many high speed corner (it's more about medium speed corner in the S2). I think it's more a track who will hide how much Ferrari are behind Mercedes, and also who will see Red Bull on the podium at least (they will come with a big upgrade I heard on Canal +).
Hot temperature is a fair point.Spoutnik wrote: ↑18 Jul 2017, 18:36I don't know why everyone is saying it's a Mercedes track. Ok it's maybe one of the track where it's the most difficult to beat Lewis nevertheless it's a hot temperature track, with not so many hard braking point, not so many high speed sector, and not so many high speed corner (it's more about medium speed corner in the S2). I think it's more a track who will hide how much Ferrari are behind Mercedes, and also who will see Red Bull on the podium at least (they will come with a big upgrade I heard on Canal +).
About hard braking points I think it's a Mercedes advantage since the switch to Hybrid PU + Hamilton's style of driving increase that. It's down to their wheelbase, which is as you probably know the longest, and furthermore to their PU who still a little bit better, it give them a more powerful MGU-K harvesting, which gave also a better stability and balance on hard braking. I think the track who will show this really well will be Monza. But we've seen what I describe at Montreal for example, or during the past year at Monza where the Merc were simply unbeatable. And I think that's also why their MGU-K is so fragile, sensitive (especially in 2014, Canada failure, Abu Dhabi failure...)Moose wrote: ↑18 Jul 2017, 18:47Hot temperature is a fair point.Spoutnik wrote: ↑18 Jul 2017, 18:36I don't know why everyone is saying it's a Mercedes track. Ok it's maybe one of the track where it's the most difficult to beat Lewis nevertheless it's a hot temperature track, with not so many hard braking point, not so many high speed sector, and not so many high speed corner (it's more about medium speed corner in the S2). I think it's more a track who will hide how much Ferrari are behind Mercedes, and also who will see Red Bull on the podium at least (they will come with a big upgrade I heard on Canal +).
Re hard braking points - I don't see why you think that's Mercedes' advantage - Monaco demonstrated that hard braking points are their weakness, not their strength.
Re being about medium speed corners - no - it's about medium to high speed corners. Most of the important corners on the track are in the 180-250km/h range, which is exactly the kinds of corners that Mercedes has been stretching its legs at recently.
It's true that it also has a bunch of 100-150km/h corners, but we have little evidence to categorize those either as Mercedes or Ferrari territory. No circuit since Spain (where the Mercedes changed completely) has had any significant number of them.
A very different type of 100-150km/h corner though. At Baku, those corners are mostly about hard braking stability into them, and then traction out of them. The ones at Hungary are much more about maintaining apex speed, and keeping a good flow through the corners.
