I agree that Red Bull is still the team to beat, but you can’t deny McLaren’s progress. A car simply doesn’t challenge for wins in F1 just because the circuit’s characteristics don’t suit it. It must be probably at least one of the top-3 cars in overall competitiveness among all the teams, and the McLaren is that. You can argue that among the top three cars, certain characteristics of circuits will suit each of them differently and will give one an advantage over the others, but the circuit characteristics don’t all of the sudden make one of the top-3 cars into a mid-packer or a mid-packer a race winner.

Don’t forget that the Nurburgring showed the McLaren to be competitive. The Nurb is a track with lots of variety: a great mix of low, medium, and high-speed corners. McLaren had arguably the 2nd quickest car there, and if Brawn had not run lighter than them in Q3 they wouldn’t have outqualified the Maccas. If Hamilton and Webber hadn’t gotten together into the first corner, Hamilton would have grabbed the lead on the start since he would have had grip in the right-rear tire, and he would have finished on the podium.

McLaren are probably still a tenth or two off the pace of the Red Bull, but they’re not far off. Hamilton was just a tenth off Webber in Q2 at Hungary when all the cars ran laps on light fuel and option tires. His win was probably aided by the fact that Red Bull made a mistake in their tire choice, but then again they must have had reason to be concerned about how the option tires were holding up on longer runs. Furthermore, Hamilton really did slow up in the second stint to manage his tires, so his advantage on the options was sacrificed at that point.

It’s already been great at one such circuit:

The Nurburgring, where they introduced the updates.

The Nurb is about as good a test of a car’s versatility as it gets. There is a great mix of low-speed, 2nd gear corners and medium-high speed, 4th-5th gear corners. McLaren weren’t as quick as Red Bull there, but they were arguably quicker than Brawn, who only outqualified them because they were lighter on fuel.

Furthermore, we all like to call the Hungaroring a low-speed track, and this is mostly true. But there are high-speed corners there, and the McLaren looked composed in them.

You can say that that the Hungaroring suited the car’s characteristics more than other circuits, but the role that the individual circuit plays in determining a car’s relative performance is very overrated. A Formula One car doesn’t go from being a mid-packer to winning by 11 seconds just because a circuit’s characteristics suit it particularly well. F1 cars must have a requisite innate competitiveness for all circuits before it can compete for wins on any track. The car must be at least in the top-3 among all the teams in overall competitiveness in order to be a race winner, and the McLaren is certainly that, now.

If the earliest anyone has ever scored a fastest lap was on lap 40. And, Hamilton clocked his on lap 16 last weekend, then I can’t imagine how fast the Mclaren car really is. Hamilton mustve been holding back most of the race.
Wow, what a development..

Either way, he has to use Phil’s leftovers, just like Jaime is left with what Seabass hasn’t used.

He somehow manages to be a non-story in every race.

Even midway through the race, the spikes seems to co-relate.

Any reasons to that? Wind speed? Yellow flags?

I think by comparing the gradient of the spikes, maybe we can see how each driver copes with the same “changes” of the track on each lap.

Eddie Jordan during last weekend’s coverage, as well as some here, hail the advance of teams such as Ferrari, McLaren and Alonso’s Renault as a bonus for brawn… but looking at the past couple of races they look to be more likely inbetween the Brawns and Red Bulls rather than in front of the lot.

Can’t wait for Spa and Monza.

Q. How much of a factor was KERS in the race?

Button :It is a bit… The next race, KERS is reasonably important. But the big KERS circuits will be Spa and Monza – they are just going to destroy us on those circuits, which perhaps is a good thing.

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