F1 classic races - Hungary

IN A new series, I will be looking back at six classic races every weekend from the country about to stage an event in the 2011 FIA Formula One World Championship.  This is my selection, of races in Hungary between 1991 and 2010.  Enjoy the archive!

1992

FINALLY: Mansell achieves his goal, although Senna won the race

WINNER: Ayrton Senna (McLaren Honda), 2^nd: Nigel Mansell (Williams Renault), 3^rd: Gerhard Berger (McLaren Honda)

ONE man dominated the 1992 world championship, but it was a charging drive that earnt Nigel Mansell his coveted crown.  Starting second behind team-mate Riccardo Patrese, Mansell made a bad start, dropping behind both McLaren’s of Ayrton Senna and Gerhard Berger.  He fought back past Berger and when Patrese spun off, the championship looked secure.  However, a puncture forced Nigel into the pits and back down to sixth spot.  Catching Senna was a forlorn task, but ‘Our Nige’ ensured he fought for his title.  First, Michael Schumacher was catapulted off the road when his rear wing flew off in the direction of Budapest airport!  The Lotus of Mika Hakkinen and Martin Brundle were easily dispensed with and finally, a bullish pass on Berger got Mansell back into second spot, even when third was enough for the title.  After many near-misses, Nigel had done it at last!

1997

WINNER: Jacques Villeneuve (Williams Renault), 2^nd: Damon Hill (Arrows Yamaha), 3^rd: Johnny Herbert (Sauber Petronas)

THE Damon Hill/Arrows combination always looked like it would fail and so it did; but for one magical weekend in Hungary.  The world champion recaptured his 1996 form to qualify his underpowered chassis in third spot.  Hill jumped past Jacques Villeneuve into the first corner and then sensationally overtook Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari on lap 11 into the first corner.  Blistered tyres and a spare chassis finished Schumacher’s podium chances and he wasn’t the only one suffering.  Giancarlo Fisichella spun off trying to pass the Ferrari; Mika Hakkinen lost engine power on his McLaren and Heinz-Harald Frentzen’s bad luck continued when the fuel filler cap refused to open at his pitstop.  After seeing off the threat of David Coulthard, Villeneuve pursued in vain, but cruel luck was about to strike.  Hill’s throttle started cutting out with three laps to go, leaving him a sitting target.  On the last lap, Villeneuve used the grass on the exit of turn three to steal victory from Damon’s deserved grasp.  Johnny Herbert came home in an excellent third for Sauber.

1998

WINNER: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari), 2^nd: David Coulthard (McLaren Mercedes), 3^rd: Jacques Villeneuve (Williams Mecachrome)

HALFWAY through the 1998 race and Michael Schumacher’s world championship hopes looked to be in tatters.  The McLaren’s were walking away into the distance and Schumacher was struggling to pass Jacques Villeneuve’s Williams Mecachrome.  Ross Brawn came up with an absolute masterstroke and brought Schumacher in for an early second stop, turning his race into a three-stopper.  His searing pace was unleashed and when the McLaren team tried to respond, they crucially lost track position.  Even a brief excursion onto the grass on lap 52 couldn’t halt Schumacher’s charge and he started lapping three seconds quicker than anyone else.  By lap 60, his advantage was sufficient enough to pit for the third time and retain his lead.  Mika Hakkinen’s challenge faded thanks to a faulty shock absorber, which relegated the Finn to a lapped sixth, behind David Coulthard, Villeneuve, Damon Hill’s Jordan and a flu-ridden Heinz-Harald Frentzen.  Even today, this remains one of Michael Schumacher’s greatest ever victories.

2001

WINNER: Michael Schumacher (Ferrari), 2^nd: Rubens Barrichello (Ferrari), 3^rd: David Coulthard (McLaren Mercedes)

THIS was nowhere near a classic, but it was a title clincher.  David Coulthard had to beat Michael Schumacher to stand any hope of launching a title fightback.  It became ever more unlikely when Schumacher lapped 0.7secs quicker than anyone else in qualifying.  He took off at the start and wasn’t seen for the remainder of the afternoon.  The main scrap was between Coulthard and the second Ferrari of Rubens Barrichello.  DC lost out at the start to the Brazilian, but slick McLaren pit work got the Scot out ahead in the first round of pitstops.  However, Ferrari turned the tables at the second stops and Barrichello leapfrogged ahead again.  The path was clear for Schumacher to take his seventh win of the season, his fourth world drivers’ championship and to equal Alain Prost’s record of 51 GP victories.  With Barrichello second, the constructor’s championship was also sealed in Ferrari’s favour, having scored nearly double the points of nearest rivals McLaren.  For Ferrari, it was the perfect day and years of Maranello domination were well and truly underway.

2003

WINNER: Fernando Alonso (Renault), 2^nd: Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren Mercedes), 3^rd: Juan Pablo Montoya (Williams BMW)

THE remarkable Fernando Alonso had gone off the boil in mid-season and Jarno Trulli had outpaced him in the last three events.  When Trulli went quickest in Friday’s qualifying session, with Alonso down in sixth, it looked like we were in for more of the same.  However, Alonso stormed to pole position on Saturday and never looked back.  He was massively helped by Mark Webber’s much slower Jaguar getting into second position in a chaotic start.  Webber held up the rest of the opposition, allowing Alonso to build up a 30 second cushion in the first 15 laps.  Rubens Barrichello’s championship challenge ended when he suffered a calamitous rear suspension failure.  After spinning at the second corner, Ralf Schumacher produced a stirring fightback to fourth position, but his title chances also looked dead and buried.  This was because his team-mate, Juan Pablo Montoya survived a scrappy spin in the closing stages to finish third.  Kimi Raikkonen was an excellent second and it set the championship up for a grand finale, especially as Michael Schumacher qualified and finished a very distant and lapped eighth.  At least he started; Ralph Firman fractured his heel and missed the race after a terrible crash in practice, but this was Alonso’s weekend, as he stole Bruce McLaren’s record to become the youngest ever Formula One winner.  That was until a young German called S. Vettel came on the horizon of course!

2006

WINNER: Jenson Button (Honda), 2^nd: Pedro de la Rosa (McLaren Mercedes), 3^rd: Nick Heidfeld (BMW Sauber)

BOTH Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher entered the race with grid penalties.  Alonso had been penalised for brake-testing Robert Doornbos in Friday practice, whilst Schumacher overtook Alonso and new BMW driver Robert Kubica under red flags on Saturday morning.  On a wet day, the unpredictable took place.  Alonso produced a great drive and looked set to win from 15^th on the grid.  However, a wheel nut came loose after his second pitstop, which left him spinning helplessly into the barriers.  Schumacher couldn’t take advantage though; retiring with suspension damage after minor contact with Nick Heidfeld with just three laps remaining.  Kubica’s later disqualification still earnt the German a fortunate point.  All this opened the door for Jenson Button to storm through from 14^th on the grid to claim his first Grand Prix victory.  Pedro de la Rosa was a notable second for McLaren, recording his first podium finish.

Tom Walkinshaw loses cancer battle

OWNER of the rugby union side Gloucester Rugby and ex-F1 team Principal Tom Walkinshaw passed away on Sunday night.  He was 64, losing his brave battle with long cancer.

Born in Scotland in 1946, Tom was a keen racing enthusiast from an early age and began racing in 1968 in Formula Ford.  He won the production class in the British Touring Car Championship in 1974 and raced as high as Formula 2.  However, it was his success as a team owner that made Tom Walkinshaw a famous name in the motor racing industry.

He established TWR (Tom Walkinshaw Racing) in 1976, and began a very fruitful partnership with Jaguar in sportscars.  Before this, he won the European Touring Car Championship title in 1984 in a Jaguar and came third two years later alongside Win Percy in the legendary Australian touring car battle, the Bathurst 1000.

In 1988, Tom retired from driving and decided to concentrate on management, and it bought immediate results.  Their motorsport portfolio increased very rapidly, and it was Jaguar where the main success came.  

They won the World Sportscar title in 1987, winning eight of the ten races.  A year later, the Jaguars stormed Le Mans.  Johnny Dumfries, Andy Wallace and Jan Lammers took the honours and Walkinshaw was also responsible for poaching technical director Ross Brawn from Arrows, and making him into a legendary force in sportscars.  Sauber Mercedes dominated the 1989 event, with a 1-2 finish, but the Jags returned to the winners’ rostrum in Le Mans in 1990.  With Sauber not returning, the Jaguar team overcame a stiff challenge from Porsche to take a historic 1-2 finish.  Lammers, Wallace and Franz Konrad were second, behind John Nielsen, Price Cobb and Martin Brundle.  It was Brundle’s greatest career achievement and the BBC commentator remembers Tom’s passion for Le Mans; “He was a mentor to me; an entrepreneurial racer and a great tactician.”

FIERY: Verstappen's 94 fire spelt the end at Benetton for Tom

At the British Grand Prix in 1991, news brokethrough of TWR’s 35% buyout in the Benetton Formula One team.  Walkinshaw would join Flavio Briatore in owning the team and took the talented Brawn with him to Benetton.  It was Walkinshaw’s insistence of the talents of Michael Schumacher, who’d raced for Sauber Mercedes in sportscars against Tom’s Jaguar squad that gave Briatore the belief to poach Schumi from under Jordan’s noses at Monza in 1991.  In 1994, he played an instrumental part in Schumacher’s first world championship title.  However, he was seen as the controversial villain in the team and parted company with Benetton at the end of the season.  Walkinshaw was seen to challenge the black flag against Schumacher at the British Grand Prix.  A race later, and a fuel filler was removed at the German Grand Prix, which led to a catastrophic refuelling fire for Dutchman Jos Verstappen.  Although a junior member of the team was officially blamed, it is widely claimed that Walkinshaw gave permission for the filler to be removed, hence on an FIA deal, ending his career with the newly-crowned top team in Grand Prix racing.

Tom wound up at the Benetton-owned Ligier team for 1995, and then a falling out with Briatore led to a deal for him to take sole control of the team fall through.  Consequently, he bought out Jackie Oliver’s Footwork team in 1996 and renamed it Arrows.  His persistence saw Yamaha engines come onboard, Bridgestone tyres to make their debut a year earlier than planned and encouraged world champion Damon Hill to join the ambitious programme.  The programme was a disaster.  The car was massively uncompetitive and although Hill came so close to winning the Hungarian Grand Prix, until a throttle problem on the last lap cost him the race to Jacques Villeneuve, Hill and Walkinshaw parted company at the end of the season, and not on the best of terms.  Damon, who now owns the BRDC valued Walkinshaw’s ambition; “He was a very big-hearted guy who put everything he had into motor racing in all of its forms.”

FADING: Tom with Briatore and Bernie in his final F1 season

Afterwards, it was largely downhill in Formula One for Tom Walkinshaw, although there were a few highlights.  On the track, there was a double point’s finish in Monaco in 1998 and Verstappen ran as high as second in the 2001 Austrian and Malaysian Grand Prix’s.  Off-track, he secured a massive sponsorship deal with the mobile phone giant Orange for 2000, but it wasn’t enough for the failing Arrows team.  The Arrows team went bust at the end of the 2002 season, after failing to pay Jaguar its fee for Cosworth engines.  The team’s last appearance in F1 came at Hockenheim in 2002.  Although his TWR team helped Rickard Rydell and Volvo to a British Touring Car Championship title in 1998 and he continued to run a touring car team in Australia, his major involvement in motorsport was finished.

At the same time as the Arrows team was disappearing out of F1, Walkinshaw started to turn his attentions towards rugby union.  He was the chairman of Premiership rugby from 1998-2002 and pumped plenty of money into his role as Gloucester chairman.  Although he turned the club into a leading force, he was unable to turn that money into success on a domestic or European scale.

Tom Walkinshaw (14 August 1946 - 12 December 2010)

Some will say he had a ruthless and dark side to his business, but Tom Walkinshaw was a mild, generous and kind man, who didn’t quite achieve the success he craved, especially in motorsports ultimate pinnacle.  However, he was a massive presence and a real hard-worker and he will be missed, both in the rugby and motor racing circles.

RIP Tom