Lewis Hamilton won the Hungarian GP ahead of Kimi Räikkönen after keeping the Lotus driver behind him for the latter stages of the race. Romain Grosjean completed a double podium for Lotus while a difficult strategy dropped Jenson Button down to sixth. It was a fairly uneventful race at the Hungaroring, with overtaking difficult, although Pastor Maldonado found himself getting trouble again after pushing Paul di Resta off the track; Michael Schumacher had troubles even before the race began; and Narain Karthikeyan pulled off track with broken front left suspension.
There were not any spectacular moves throughout the race, or “wow” moments, so my race highlight is quite simply Hamilton holding on to win. Despite increased pressure from Räikkönen, Hamilton was able to maintain the gap as the pair took tenths out of each other, negating any advantage the other may have. Hamilton also faced early pressure from Grosjean for the majority of the first stint of the race until they pitted.
And now a question about DRS: does it need to be enabled at every Grand Prix? The Hungaroring is notoriously a difficult track to overtake at and even DRS failed to introduce more overtaking, so is it necessary to have it if any advantage which could be gained from it is negated by the style of the track. Is there any way DRS could be used differently to aid overtaking? Does it need to be there if it does not create any sort of advantage?
A numbers game: The 2012 F1 season in numbers at the half way stage
2012 German GP: Backmarkers faster than the leaders, and Vettel punished for overtake