Hungary - A 30th Birthday to remember

Justin:

Well, instead of asking what Hungary offered up as a race, it would be much simpler to ask what did it not offer?

Not much, is the answer. It had everything. Overtakes, rocket launches at the start, prangs, offs, people surging through the field, safety cars...overtakes, prangs...best race of the year!

I was there to witness it all first hand. What a race to pick to go and see live!

It was bloody hot, with the Friday and Saturday reaching 38/39 degrees centigrade - with a track temperature of 59 degrees centigrade. That is insane.

We were sat in a stand (never figured that one out) at the first chicane - turn 5 or 6 I think? I couldn't believe the roar when the cars came round on lap one with the Ferrari pair leading the way.

The roar was even louder when Lewis binned it into the kitty litter. Video here:

You can hear me shouting "Was that Hamilton??!!". The video screen was a way down the road and whilst you can identify people via their helmets (though my co-blogger seemed befuddled by the clear distinction between Nico's black helmet and the white one of Lewis), in the first lap melee I lost track in the crowd eruption.

Finns and Ferrari
I'd say 90% of fans were Ferrari fans of some description and there were a mighty load of Finnish people supporting Kimi. They don't appear to notice that Bottas is of the same country.

Nico
A huge lost opportunity here for Nico. Ok he couldn't keep up with the Red team and was nowhere near as quick as Lewis all weekend. After Hamilton went off, there was bags of time between the two drivers, but for some reason Nico just couldn't catch the guys ahead and seemed to fixate on what Lewis was up to behind. As it happened, drama unfolded late on for both as Hamilton received a drive through in his most error-strewn race since 2011 and Rosberg...oh Nico.

It was difficult keeping track of who was where sometimes so the first we saw was a Mercedes tootling around with a puncture...or was he just going really slow when he came by us?

I'm happy
Alonso - legend. Pushing his car back to the pits after it conked out in qualy then hauling it to a superb 5th place on Sunday. You could see in qualy and indeed in the race that he was pushing to the limit, the McLaren dancing..skating...off the kerb coming out of the chicane as it accelerated away. Beautiful watching F1 at this part of the track. Oh, and on the Thursday evening pitwalk (we got there despite a walk of death across hills and fields for 40 minutes through an electrical storm) I saw Alonso sat in his car. Awesome.

Jules - #17
The minute of silence in his memory was observed beautifully by all of the 80/90,000 fans at the circuit. I couldn't believe how silent it was and how emotional it all was. That's what I love about F1. We all follow different drivers and teams, but we all love F1. Jules was a part of what we love.

Next stop = Belgium.