Saturday iWitness in Budapest

Posted on Sunday 01 Aug 2010 and tagged with iwitness, hungary.

Mark Webber celebrates his 150th grand prix start this weekend. It’s one hell of a milestone, until you realise he’s done only half the number of races of Rubens Barrichello. “What Rubens has managed is phenomenal,” said Mark this afternoon. “He goes back to Brazil after a race and returns for the next one completely refreshed. I want to know what he gets up to over there!” Any clues, Rubinho?

Quote of the day from Alex Wurz. When asked for his thoughts on the team orders fiasco in Hockenheim, he said: “Everyone knows there are team orders in F1. The execution of the swap was the problem; it was a clear case of ego winning over intelligence.”

It was a good afternoon for F1’s rookies. Nico Hulkenberg out-qualified Rubens Barrichello, making it into Q3 for the third time in four races, and Vitaly Petrov will start ahead of his Renault team-mate Robert Kubica for the first time this year. “It feels very nice,” said the Russian rocket. We’ll bet it does.

The peloton moved slowly along Andrassy Ut, the main drag north from downtown Budapest. It then stuck to the back-roads, while the traffic heading to the Hungaroring filed onto the M3 motorway. This was no ordinary peloton; it was a group of 12 Mercedes Grand Prix engineers and mechanics, led by Andrew Shovlin, Michael Schumacher’s race engineer. But there was no sign of the seven-time world champion or our former driver Nico Rosberg; they sped past in two Merc E-Classes…