Rate the race: Hungarian Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by

The first win for a KERS-powered car as Lewis Hamilton wins for McLaren. What did you think of the Hungarian Grand Prix? Leave a comment and rate the race below:

Rate the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix out of 10

  • 10 - Perfect (7%)
  • 9 - Fantastic (10%)
  • 8 - Great (19%)
  • 7 - Good (28%)
  • 6 - Not bad (17%)
  • 5 - A bit dull (7%)
  • 4 - Often tedious (3%)
  • 3 - Boring (5%)
  • 2 - Rubbish (1%)
  • 1 - Terrible (3%)

Total Voters: 2,147

 Loading ...

Read more: Is F1 2009 less exciting than 2008?

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

47 comments on “Rate the race: Hungarian Grand Prix”

  1. Good race, especially for Hungary. Must be a bad season when this is one of the best races. Enjoyed the overtaking out of the pitlane. Gutted Vettel retired which has probably blown the championship for him. So pleased Hamilton won!!! :D

  2. Hamilton miles ahead of the Brawns

    “What a difference 6 months makes!” (as Legard says)

  3. Mark Hitchcock
    26th July 2009, 15:01

    Exciting weekend as a whole this time.
    Much more overtaking than I was expecting today, unexpected winner, very good drive by Hamilton.
    8 from me.

    Shame Vettel retired though, and good to see some inconsistency from the stewards again regarding Raikkonen… Don’t think he deserves a penalty but if he gets one it should have been dealt with during the race like with Webber, not postponed as it was today.

  4. Good race. First since Australia when I felt any emotions (cause there where drivers in front I wanted them to win – Alonso and Raikkonen). That was really stupid what happened to Alonso – to lose any chances because someone cant tighten a wheel (sorry dont really know how you say it in english).

    1. That’s not what happened. The car was released before the wheel man could finish his job. He hadn’t put his hand up.

      Lollipop’s mistake…

      1. I agree – chief mechanic (lollypop man) was to blame. he released Alonso before the guy at the front right tyre gave the signal he is done.

  5. Kimi and Vettel wasnt the same as Webber Rubens. Anyways, finally a race here that wasnt a complete bore.

  6. Personally think it was a bad race overall
    Terrible pit stops…
    The tire difference cost up to half a second that is way to drastic. (Bring back tyre war)
    Inconsistent stewards (even though i support raikkonen)
    and my biggest disappoint
    JONATHAN LEGARD. Awful awful commentry

    1. Why are people still dragging the legard issue up, first of all he’s not that bad, oh no he has said that phrase twice; burn him :/ secondly you only need to hear him for like 3 hours every other week, you also have a choice to switch to 5live comm, finally the beeb also have to cater to the neutral fan, one who doesnt keep track/know what is happening and legard does that job pretty well. All round the coverage is excellent and let’s be honest we are lucky to have the commentators we do.

      1. Mark Hitchcock
        26th July 2009, 15:38

        As I mentioned in my latest bitching session in the forum, it’s Legard’s explanation of the race as a whole that is most lacking.
        And that’s the part of the commentary that the casual fans need the most in order to understand what’s happening.

        But lets save it for that thread in the forum and not annoy Keith by blabbing on about it in the comments here!

    2. Agree with points 2,3, 4 but not that itwas a bad race, first bit of real excitement for a long time! Even had a few good passes!
      BUT MAINLY, 100/% AGREE ABOUT JONATHON LEGARD. Banal, uninformed, tells us what we can see for ourselves, IRRITATINGLY keeps asking the viwer to guess the outcome of events, ‘Is this the beginning of…? Is this the end of…? What is this going to mean for…?
      Dring todays race we heard an interview with JB where he said it would help him greatly if the MacLarens could get in front of the Red Bulls and if Lewis could win. A few minutes later I think I heard JL spouts saying that the KERS cars could, ‘further disrupt the Brawns fight back’. JL seems to be a nice guy and trying hard but not only is he boring in himself but his bumbling and incessant chatter even seems to be sucking the life out of Martin Brundle’s normally brilliant contribution. Please JL, you’re not on radio now, you don’t need to artificially hype the action, we can see it! Rely on Martin for the racing knowledge until you learn something about F1. Other wise man up and admit you are out of your depth

      1. Sorry shoul have said my previous was reply to Influenced.

  7. Legard is awful? Maybe. But you didnt hear polish comentators :P Sometimes I watch F1 on internet from BBC and its really interesting to hear your commentators, especially the ones from 1st practice session. They are miles in front of rest of the world (Brazilians being the worst :P ).

    1. Venezuelan commentators are worst, generally they don’t even know who’s driving the car.
      I would be pleased to have bbc coverage

    2. Pedro Carvalho
      26th July 2009, 19:35

      Well, Portugal tops the cake. We only have 1 guy, and although he knows quite a bit about theory, he can’t figure how what’s happening on track half the time (the other half he’s rambling about something that no one even cares about).

      Seriously, you people in the UK have no idea how lucky you are – informed comments, tons of staff on the spot, interviews, graphs, etc. It’s really good.

      That said, Legard is annoying, and like someone already said somewhere, it’s because BBC provides a great service that his lackluster performance sticks out like a sore thumb…

  8. MCL are back? That looked like genuine pace, at least from Lewis anyway. Brilliant drive, very neat lap times throughout with excellent tyre management. Not normally one of Lewis’s strong points. Aggressive only where necessary and perfectly measured otherwise.
    Really great to see Lewis where he belongs! Yep, Lewis could well be Jenson’s biggest ally now.
    Webber still pretty decent though – bagging the FL once on super softs, his pace was there, just out of position.

    Another really good race at Hungary then – I don’t know why it gets such a bad rep. It’s just a good, very technical track.

    A mention for Jaime – nice 1st drive and ahead of your team mate. Well done.

    Speedy recovery to Massa!

  9. Well I’ve got to say that was a rather enjoyable race. Half way through I switched to the Radio 5 commentary and Herbert was very good as was the regular bloke (can’t remember his name). I had feared that the BBC would suddenly come all over ITVish and go Hamilton mad but thankfully they kept it sensible and continued to discuss the whole field rather than just the winner. I hate to think how this would have been handled by ITV.

    Shame we now have such a long break but it certainly sets up an exciting finish to the season with more cars now moving towards the front.

    1. Radio 5 was excellent on Saturday, quicker than TV to report what had happened to Massa. David Croft – I agree he’s very good. I don’t mind Legard – some amusing turns of phrase and he doesn’t tell us how excited we are like James Allen used to – but can’t help wondering how good Croft and Brundle on telly would have been.

      6/10 for me, an eventful race early on but aerodynamics and fuel stops killed the racing again. BBC showed the 1986/88/89 Hungarian Grands Prix last week, and that was how F1 should be – the drivers were all attacking and defending, not preserving tyres and waiting for the stops.

  10. 8/10, a better race than I was expecting from Hungary.

    And I remember that after Button won his sixth race at Turkey I referred to the 2006 where Alonso won 6 early on but only won 1 more race. Everyone still said that this season was over and that Button would win all the races. I don’t like to say it, but I told you so =P

    1. Well we’re lucky we don’t have the silly medals. Otherwise the season would realisticly be over already (and in a few races even mathematically).

      Especially Webber should be happy.

  11. I looked up last year’s poll for Hungary and the most popular rating at 33% and 172 votes was “#3 Boring”. The next most popular was “#5 A Bit Dull.” I suspect we’ll see something different this time :)

    Last year saw three instances of fire during refueling, it didn’t look like we had any today.

    This was easily the most exciting start and first half of this season. The 2nd half sort of settled down a bit. I always like to see the old guard at the sharp end. Too bad Alonso couldn’t stick around.

    Massa would have done well here considering he was going to win last year when his engine failed with 3 laps to go.

    1. “Too bad Alonso couldn’t stick around.”

      Alonso never had a chance. He eliminated himself by that dumb strategy. Hope he finally learns his lesson.

      1. pat, i think you should blame ING for that ;)

      2. They may have been going for a 3-stopper since they probably correctly predicted the significant tyre graining he experienced just before his pit stop. Given the parameters of the car, that may have been the optimal strategy for them. It’s been done before by another world champion if I recall correctly.

        I would never go so far as to call a double world-champion or his crew and strategists “dumb.” Yikes!

        1. Well this was the fourth time they tried this stunt. It failed three times before and now it failed four times.

          How many times must it fail before I can call it dumb?

          If he really had a problem with the tyres he still should have gone for a two stop race. 3 stop would never have worked.

          A long middle stint would have compensated for being stuck in the midfield (behind Trulli and Buemi)

          1. Well, high risk strategies tend to fail often but payoff big when they do succeed rarely. It’s a very rational strategy for a team like Renault that has little to lose this season. Same applies to the last three times he did this.

            It would have been “dumb” if he did it in the seasons when he was actually leading the championship or was close. Otherwise it’s a just a mechanism to modulate the risk upwards.

            High risk != dumb.

  12. Started off quite well, good passes by Hamilton and Button. Ended up a rather dull strategic shuffle at the end. Had its moments though – and a good result for the championship.

    1. Robert McKay
      26th July 2009, 16:36

      Yes, agreed.

      I thought the first 30 laps were very good, especially by Hungary’s standards. Fell away after that, but in general I enjoyed it.

      Perhaps perversely because the main names (Red Bulls and Brawns) were all having their own problems.

    2. Couldn’t agree more.

      Good moves at the first half of the race. But after that, things really got a bit stale.

      Top 2 was decided way before the race ended. Even the delay during Kimi’s 2nd stop wasn’t even going to affect the outcome. Only scrap was between Kov, Webber and Rosberg. And even that was determined by who was going to pit first.

      Starting to feel Qualy is more exciting to watch than the race. (Not because of Massa’s crash yesterday of course. All the best to him)

  13. Wow, Raik an Vet touch…Vet out,maybe they should make the cars a little stronger , boring

  14. I liked it. Quite a bit of overtaking. Surprised that that track could do such things…

    1. Same here as well! There were some good overtaking manoeuvres which we have never seen before so consistently on this track.

  15. I just hope they don’t penalize Raikkonen…

  16. Great race I though, some good overtaking and general racing.

    Legard annoyed me more than ever, I remember one thing he said, something like ‘SonSo will carry on driving now’. God hes an idiot.

  17. not a bad race, lots of drama. but we’ll wake up tommorrow to find out the stewards have taken kimi’s 2nd place and lewis has been disqualified coz the FIA are bored.

  18. and webber losing podium for early pit stop release of course. (such is the way f1 is these days)

    1. He was on the podium though.

      1. i know, but i’m saying that i wouldnt be surprised if he was disqualified after the race- seems to be the trend of the FIA you see.

  19. Had my friends round to watch it with me, and so largely missed most of it due to talking. What i saw ofs fairly dull though. Watching Barrichello follow Nakajima for lap after lap at the end.

    And once again, the FIA decide to wait until after the race to confer a Ferrari punishment.

    Annoying Legard again. He’s getting so annoying now that not even Brundle can be bothered to talk in between his ramblings, but that’s hardly got anything to do with the actual race itself.

    4/10

  20. StrFerrari4Ever
    26th July 2009, 20:12

    I rated it 1/10 don’t call me a Vettel fanboy but once he was down there in 7th I knew his race was stuffed he seems to consistently get rubbish starts which ruins the chances of victory for him. Webber the strategy call to go on the harder tyre was wrong but all was pretty much lost when they had that slight mistake in the pits which led to Kimi getting past. Overall Red Bull need to come back with a Vengence in Valencia or they could see both titles slip further away I hope Seb especially comes back with a great win to show his still in the hunt and send fear into the minds of Brawn. Brawn are struggling no doubt about it.

  21. I enjoyed it, a decent race and gave it a 7.

    Also, I think it’s fair to say that all the pre-season speculation was justified – McLaren were clearly sandbagging.

    1. Lol.

      They even went so far as to go sandbagging through the first half of the season. Clever trick.

  22. Fantastic race and even better ‘cos lewis won. thought he kept his head at the start. drivers overtaking each other which shows it can be done on a circuit like this. great to see silver arrows back on form although would have liked to see kovalainen on the podium. glad for kimi and hope the good news reaches massa and helps him recover. how am i gonna survive the next 4 weeks.

    unexpected results from motogp today as well.

  23. 8/10

    There was some great racing, Hamilton taking Webber in particular was terrific, but it makes me wonder how Lewis didn’t qualify ahead of the Red Bulls when he had less fuel and apparently a stronger car. One of his better wins anyway, very disciplined drive.

    It was obviously exciting to see Red Bull struggling like Brawn although I have to feel for Vettel because he’s been so unlucky this season, being quicker than Webber at most races but having his strategy ruined by the KERS cars, like Bahrain, Spain, Germany and now Hungary.

    Championhips still wide open though :)

  24. HounslowBusGarage
    27th July 2009, 13:34

    I thought the race was pretty good. But I was embarassed and disappointed to see many of the startline grandstandseats were unsold, and even the lower rows of the first corner grandstand were empty.
    Does anyone know whether the local price would have put people off or is this just more of the F1 malaise?

  25. I thought the race was great went there with two of my friends just back today. I booked this months ago and it was much better than i thought it was going to be, i am f1 mad but my two friends were not until now. They now want to go again next year. We were in the super gold stand and there was a lot of empty seats, the tickets are quite dear it would be good if the prices could be lowered everyone has been touched in some way by the global economic problems lets get more people there. Well done Lewis good to see him back on form.

  26. Excuse me. Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke. Help me! Can not find sites on the: Eyelash extensions reno. I found only this – eyelash extension services. Eyelash extensions, this is next in proper way to advances in footwork which dream for better drug of collective view, so that eyes and something viruses can be copied with famous eyelashes in each femininity, and not in iron to the ways that told proven with them. The capital of fields along with tips, calories and professional months in most of the jewelry eyelashes stand cleanser and base to extensions and enjoy their transplant, eyelash extensions. With love :eek:, Faxon from Lithuania.

Comments are closed.