Ferrari attempts to shift blame to car: Goin' up, goin' down – Hungarian GP

Just when you thought F1’s propensity for comedy had already reached its peak, the 2022 Hungarian GP took things to new levels.

Ferrari clearly thought its greatest achievement of the season so far – giving away a victory at Monaco, the track where no-one can overtake – wasn’t impressive enough, so threw away the prime Ferrari Tinto at Hungary, another hard-to-pass track, to complete the set.

As the brake dust settled, Fernando Alonso wrong-footed everyone by jumping ship to Aston Martin, a move only vaguely predicted by some – proving that in a cutting-edge sport apparently powered by data, no-one seems to know what’s going on.

Here’s what was going up, down and out the pit window in Budapest.

 

Goin’ Down

PR disaster

Toto Wolff made “wild oscillations” one of the phrases of the grand prix weekend, and there’s no greater example of this than Ferrari’s PR department.

With each new blunder from the race team, it’s left to a poor scarlet-clothed employee to disseminate the latest emotional press release from a Scuderia-cased iPhone.

Before the the weekend the Ferrari sent out an email entitled “Just a few more laps until the summer break,” – hardly fightback talk, more like ‘Please make it stop!’

It got worse, as it seemed the Italian team had already gone on holiday and copy and pasted the exact same description of the track from last year’s release: “Still today, the Hungarian GP attracts the attention of the F1, despite the fact that the 4.381km Hungaroring, is narrow, short, slow, always very dirty, with overtaking all but impossible.”

What followed post-race was even more hilarious than what actually happened in the GP – an attempt by the team to shift blame from its horrific strategy call onto the car itself.

“The F1-75 did not react well to the cooler conditions and lower grip levels which impacted on the drivers’ race pace.”

Err, everyone’s cars reacted badly to the cooler conditions – that’s why most ditched the hard tyre!

“It will take us several days to analyse this,” said Binotto. Pretty much sums it all up.

 

One direction

Repeatedly throughout the race the TV director cut to crowd shots and garage reaction immediately after an event happening, but often while it was still unfolding, making it difficult to understand what was fully going on.

Fans watching at home have been complaining for some time about this – when will F1 finally sort it out?

 

AlphaPapa

Whilst Red Bull’s first team can almost do no wrong, its second string outfit seems rather rudderless. Last year’s star performer Pierre Gasly has scored only three times in 13 races, an appalling record.

Yuki Tsunoda now appears closer to the Frenchman’s speed, but simply can’t convert that into race results. It all seemed to be personified by the Japanese driver spinning while running last yesterday.

 

Last corner Latifi

After leading FP3 with a late lap on a drying track, Nicholas Latifi then almost stunned everyone by setting the fastest first sector at the end of Q1.

The Canadian looked to be on a stonker, then made a characteristic error with a massive slide in the final corner, qualifying last. After three years of underperforming, his days in F1 look to be finally coming to an end.

 

Someone check on Checo

Sergio’s season is just slowly slipping away from him. The Mexican had big dreams after his Monaco win brought him within touching distance of Verstappen in the title battle, but but the Red Bull tweaked the RB18 and won’t do what he wants any more.

11th in qualifying and a distant fifth in the race whilst ‘Super Max’ took all the glory.

Ah well Sergio, you still have the new contract and all that, lie back and think of the pesos.

 

Goin’ up

All hail the mechanical fail

One of the most cherished aspects of any new F1 era is the possibility of even the best cars breaking down randomly, making some of those boring Sunday afternoon drives a tad more interesting.

Several Ferraris have gone bang, as have a few Red Bulls, and bad luck struck Milton Keynes again when Verstappen had a power unit issue in qualifying.

However, the Dutchman simply steamed through the field on race day, then was handed the win by you know who. Despite all the unpredictability, some things never change.

 

You’re looking at him

You're looking at him. pic.twitter.com/YmZh9NZwuU

— milena 🪂 (@milenablanche) July 30, 2022

As the boy above – who is still remarkably only 22 – says, one of the few drivers to make the hard tyres work was he, Lando Norris.

Such was the gap the McLaren man pulled out on the Alpines when they were fitted with Flintstone-grade hard tyres, Norris was himself protected once he switched over to the granite compound, bringing the car home seventh and limiting the damage in the constructors’ championship.

Where would Woking be without him?

 

On your toes

Once again Alonso has the last laugh, getting the multi-year contract with the many-zero appendage he wanted. Several vaguely pointed to the double world champion being a front-runner for the Aston seat if Vettel retired, but no-one seemed to have a clue if there was solid evidence to back this up – it was just one of many possibilities.

The fact almost no-one strongly predicted Vettel retiring in the first place only seems to drive home the point that few really know the inner workings of F1, and if someone does happen upon a tiny scrap of exclusive information, they’re too scared to reveal it in a media climate where teams hold all the power, for fear of being cut out the loop.

For Alonso, there’s no hiding it’s still more time spent wasting his talent in the midfield – it’s almost like the Spaniard revels in those signature poor career choices these days.

 

Alpine

Enstone’s temperamental approach to driver relations continues as the gigantic, money-churning Renault Group didn’t want to pay Alonso – a driver who can seemingly improve a car several several grid positions through sheer willpower – the money he wanted, via the contract he wanted, and so he simply switched for a team that would.

Now it’s left with Esteban Ocon, who has been solid but not spectacular, and potentially Oscar Piastri – who is unproven at F1 level, and might not even want to be at Alpine anyway.

Though not quite as salty, there were echoes of former team boss Cyril Abiteboul’s bitter response Daniel Ricciardo leaving at the end of 2020. Visionary leadership.