Track Torque: Williams hungry for Budapest

AFTER the British Grand Prix, all of the teams returned quickly to base to gear up their cars for Hungary. They had a two-and-a-bit week break to make changes for the very demanding, high down-force Hungaroring.

Williams came away from the British Grand Prix full of enthusiasm after the excellent performances by Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas in their improving cars.

They are going to make an all-out attempt to try beat big brother Mercedes at this weekend’s race.

Fortunately, it was next day to work after Silverstone for most of the teams as they are based mainly in Britain, with Ferrari taking a little longer to get home to Marinello in Italy.

Quite a lot can be done in two weeks at teams’ racing headquarters as the wind tunnel men are working continuously to come up with improvements on the cars to suit each circuit.

It really is much like fighting for your life during war time with every man for himself.

It really will be great if the men from Grove can put the cat back again amongst the pigeons this weekend, and make both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg work much harder for their money at Mercedes.

The next best option for success has got to be the prancing horse team with a much-improved Kimi Raikkonen now really able to egg Sebastian Vettel on to even greater heights.

Vettel is driving at the top of his game at the moment and needs just a few more lean and mean prancing horses pushing him along.

Because the Hungaroring is a bit of an equaliser, somewhat like Monaco, it really is a chance for the other teams to push extra hard and give the Silver Arrows a go.

Important news that I bring back from Europe is that Bernie Ecclestone is to be the sole decider of the tyre contract proposals for 2016 onwards between Michelin and Pirelli.

It could also mean a big change in tyre rules which, of course, will affect the performance of all the cars, so we wait with interest to hear the decision in September.

The other interesting news is the possible return to ground effects in Formula 1 soon.

This will be a very significant development as it will make the cars a lot quicker around the corners.

Also of interest is the concerted effort that is being made by Red Bull to get Mercedes engine power for their cars by 2016, as at present they are just not competitive.

Red Bull designer Adrian Newey is also involved with the design of a supercar for Aston Martin that might include the Red Bull name.

Back to this weekend’s racing: let’s hope we see a significant stride made by McLaren Honda as they turn up the wick in their very determined development programme for their new car.

Top notch drivers Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button deserve to do better soon. We hope that this weekend sees a breakthrough for them.

TV times are 2pm on Saturday for qualifying and 2pm on Sunday for the main race.

It is another circuit where the lap record is held by Michael Schumacher at 1 min 19.1 secs. It will be interesting to see if anyone can beat this.
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