The rain did come at the beginning of the Grand Prix at the Hungaroring making for a very exciting and eventful race. Come with me below the fold to see who triumphed amidst the chaos…

Ricciardo takes 1st with powerful drive, Alonso returns to the podium with 2nd, Hamilton amazingly 3rd after starting from pits

In a truly remarkable Hungarian Grand Prix that featured several shunts and spins, Daniel Ricciardo of team Red Bull Renault finished on top due to brilliant tire strategy from his team and a remarkably tenacious drive from the young Australian. After rain at the start forced the field to begin on Intermediate wet tires, it came down to pit stop strategy as the wet weather stayed away for the rest of the race despite overcast conditions. Ricciardo’s team played it just right, enabling their junior driver to emerge on fresh option tires late in the race and take the fight to the two former World Champions ahead whose rubber was quite a bit older. Those two men were Fernando Alonso of Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes. Ricciardo eventually picked them off, making a particularly ballsy outside pass on Hamilton with 4 laps remaining and then got Alonso on the next lap. After that, his Red Bull shot off into the distance never to be seen again until the checkered flag.

But credit must be given to the two runners up. Certainly a second place finish for Ferrari has to be counted as a major coup in this extremely disappointing 2014 season. Alonso led more laps today than he had in the last 24 races combined and it was a brilliant front-running drive from the Spaniard to give hope to all fans of Maranello that they can turn the corner and compete in the second half.  It’s also arguable that Hamilton’s efforts to capture 3rd will go down as one of the all-time great F1 drives. After his Silver Arrow burst into flames early in the first round of Saturday Qualifying, the Briton was forced to start from the pits. It seemed nearly impossible that he could duplicate his remarkable charge through the field at Hockenheim last weekend. Yet, if anything, Hamilton outdid that effort and for a while seemed as if he would make history as the first F1 driver to win a Grand Prix starting from the pits, even overcoming a quick spin just as he first emerged onto the track on cold tires. But while the story may have been different if the rains had come again, his extra long stint on primes doomed his chances at once-in-a-lifetime glory if not denying us one the most amazing efforts of recent years. When people, myself included, complain about Hamilton’s prickliness and difficult temperament, we should also keep in mind the supreme talent that enables him to pass like no one else in this generation of aces.

Hamilton’s teammate Nico Rosberg had to content himself with 4th after starting from Pole. It seemed as if the World Championship points leader was experiencing technical issues perhaps due to rear brake overheating just after switching to slicks, and that saw the German slip backwards into the field. But the problems seemed to resolve themselves and Rosberg was then primarily a victim of pit sequence and the inability to get by his teammate quickly before his last pit stop late in the race. Rosberg complained repeatedly to his race engineer that Hamilton was holding him up but in truth he was never really close enough to pass until several laps after his initial whinging and then he finally got by. So while Rosberg had the freshest rubber at the end and was catching up the top 3 at a torrid pace he eseentially ran out of laps. Nonetheless, Rosberg only conceded 3 points to his arch-rival this day.

Filipe Massa was 5th for Williams with a solid if unspectacular drive… which is a good thing since he broke his 2-race streak of crashing out on the first lap. His teammate Valtteri Bottas had a curiously poor 8th place finish after starting 2nd from the grid. Either his race set-up was not suited to the semi-dry conditions or his team blew the pit stop strategy. Kimi Raikkonen finally had a good run even after his team’s poor call to stay in the pits in Qualifying saw him start 17th. The Finnish veteran brought his Ferrari home 6th, making it a rare double points day for the Scuderia this season. Sebastian Vettel managed to get his Red Bull home safely in 7th despite having a lurid 360 spin and grazing the pit wall on the start-finish straight just about midway through the race. Still, the former 4-time World Champion must be truly flummoxed at how his teammate Ricciardo has essentially dominated him this season. Torro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne had a very good day, dicing at the front for several laps in the middle of the race before coming home 9th, and McLaren’s Jenson Button had a stolid 10th after his team incorrectly predicted rain and stuck him on Intermediates for several laps too many when slicks were the right call. Fellow McLaren pilot Kevin Magnussen got the same bad strategy and, also starting from the pits after severely damaging his chassis in Qualifying, could do no better than 12th.

The Grand Prix was marred by several heavy crashes due to the tricky track conditions, with Force India’s Sergio Perez not having Vettel’s luck and smashing his car to bits on the Start-Finish straight; teammate Nico Hulkenberg crashing out after running into Perez earlier; Romain Grosjean wiping out under a Safety Car period; and Caterham’s Marcus Ericsson also destroying his car when he spun off on Turn 3 early in the race. None of the drivers were hurt, thankfully, but it did mark the first time this season when overachieving Force India failed to score points, as well as the end of that personal streak for Hulkenberg. In the end, it was Ericsson’s big accident that brought out the first Safety Car that really shook up the race, enabling the smart teams to dive into the pits to gamble — and win — on dry weather tires. 

Tope 10 finishers here:

Complete race results over at Formula1.com.

The completion of the Grand Prix of Hungary marks the end of the first half of the season and the start of the 3-week summer break. Formula 1 returns the weekend of August 22-24th with the classic Belgian Grand Prix from Spa-Francorchamps. That is a race never to be missed and I hope to see you then!