Hungarian F1 Grand Prix: Raikkonen and Schumacher keep the season alive

McLaren-Mercedes driver Kimi Räikkönen won the Hungarian Grand Prix at Budapest. After 70 laps he took the chequered flag 35.5sec ahead of Michael Schumacher's Ferrari, with runaway championship leader Fernando Alonso failing to score points. McLaren continued to dominate races with its results ravaged by reliability issues – McLaren’s other driver Juan Pablo Montoya retired on lap 41 with a driveshaft failure while leading the race. Third and fourth places were filled by Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli, putting both Schumacher brothers on the podium for the first time in a long time and giving Toyota a clear fourth place in the constructors championship behind Renault, McLaren and Ferrari.

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It was Räikkönen’s fourth victory of the season and the sixth of his career. Kimi retains second place in the championship with 61 points, closing the gap to Fernando Alonso (Renault/87 points) to 26 points with six races to go. The Spaniard finished 11th today. With their fifth victory of the season Team McLaren Mercedes remains second in the Constructors' rankings with 105 points, closing the gap on Renault’s total of 117 which it didn’t add to in Hungary.

Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher finished a distant if relieved second in the race. Michael shot straight into the lead from front row neighbour Juan Pablo Montoya but from fourth on the grid, Kimi Raikkonen was soon past his teammate and into second place. Trulli dropped a place to fourth, while Ralf Schumacher remained fifth, but hit by Fernando Alonso on one side, and Rubens Barrichello ran into the back of Trulli. Both Alonso and Barrichello had to pit for repairs, but the Toyotas survived. Jenson Button came round in sixth, up from eighth, while teammate Takuma Sato was up three places to seventh and Nick Heidfeld was up four places to eighth.

At the front, Michael led Raikkonen by 1.9s after the first lap, but that was soon shrinking to less than a second by lap seven. They were steadily drawing away from Montoya in third place, who was around three seconds ahead of Trulli who was finding his car difficult to drive after the Barrichello assault. Teammate Ralf Schumacher wasn’t far behind.

Raikkonen was by far the earlier to pit on lap 11, although Trulli came in on lap 13. Michael and brother Ralf pitted on lap 15 which gave the lead to Montoya who was on a different strategy.

The effect of these pit stops was that Montoya now led, from a distant Michael who was 1.6s ahead of Raikkonen. Button was up to fourth place, from Ralf who was fifth, having overtaken teammate Trulli during the pit stops.

Montoya pitted on lap 22, Button on lap 23 which dropped them to third and eighth respectively. Michael now led, but once again, Raikkonen was right on his tail. Montoya had rejoined just a couple of seconds behind, but would progressively drop back. Then came the Toyotas.

Trulli and Ralf were the first to stop of the three stoppers on laps 33 and 35 respectively, resuming in the reverse order as before. Michael was next to stop on lap 36 and Kimi a lap later. Michael would take on enough fuel for 21 laps, but Kimi only took on enough for 11 – which allowed him to come out ahead of Michael and from there, he just pulled away.

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