Hungarian GP driver ratings

Asked about his chances on Thursday, Sebastian Vettel said he and Ferrari would "need to extract a perfect weekend". The result might suggest that’s what happened but he struggled during practice and was slower than Kimi Raikkonen on Friday afternoon. It started to come good during qualifying and as for the race...well, there was that start - total commitment, almost touching Lewis Hamilton’s car at full pelt on the run down to Turn 1. Job done. After that attentions were mainly focused on the action behind.

One can argue that Mercedes lost the race as much as Ferrari won it, but it was Vettel who exploited the situation and got the result as champions tend to. From P7 on the timesheets on Friday, he ended the weekend level with Ayrton Senna on 41 career wins. Much as was the case at Silverstone, he pulled a result out of the bag. 
Rating out of ten: 9

After making a slow start to life at Red Bull, Daniil Kvyat is starting to show the reason he is rated so highly by those in charge of the squad’s junior driver programme.

By all accounts Hungary was a tough weekend for the Russian as he struggled to find a set-up to match the pace of team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. However, a mature drive that belied his years saw him keep his car on the track and in one piece while others faltered, ultimately delivering a second-place finish.

Kvyat will have stronger weekends in his F1 career, but the ability to keep a cool head and not letting his frustrations boil over when ordered to let Ricciardo past - even if he did turn the airwaves blue - will stand him in good stead. 
Rating out of ten: 8

He who dares? Daniel Ricciardo’s Hungarian GP was a compelling mixture of smart thinking (saving up an extra set of soft tyres in qualifying in anticipation of the Safety Car being deployed late in the race), aggressive driving (headlined by those collisions with both Mercedes cars), and good fortune (surviving a hefty whack on the first corner which sent his Red Bull airborne and what must have been a close call with the stewards after he punctured Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes).

All in all, third was a fair result, although Ricciardo could be forgiven for wondering what might have been if only he had been able to pull off a clean move on Rosberg. Was victory there for the snatching? 
Rating out of ten: 8

As Toro Rosso have subsequently pointed out, Sunday’s top four finishers have all passed through Red Bull’s finishing school and the result was the best yet for their youngest student. Like Vettel, the weekend got better and better for Max Verstappen – and for his team, who were struggling for grip in the hot conditions experienced during practice and qualifying. Even so, Max squeezed into the top 10 and made further headway in the race, when a 15-degree temperature drop would have helped his car’s tyres.

Verstappen was on the lengthy list of offenders (he was guilty of speeding behind the Safety Car) but on balance it’s quite some measure of the 17-year-old’s calmness and maturity to finish fourth in such a bonkers race. Certainly one or two older, more experienced and celebrated drivers couldn’t manage it. 
Rating out of ten: 9

Once again when a driver was needed to wring the neck of a car and perhaps even exceed its potential, Fernando Alonso stepped up and delivered.

On outright pace there was no way the McLaren-Honda should have been near the top five, but while the travails of others played a part, Alonso still had to be there to pick up the spoils.

Even a puncture, which forced him into the pits for a tyre change after he’d fought his way into the top 10, couldn’t delay the Spaniard’s determined charge. He finished four places ahead of team-mate Jenson Button to underline his pace and the result will be timely motivation for McLaren heading into the summer break. 
Rating out of ten: 9

Was Lewis Hamilton’s display at the Hungaroring really as bad as damningly portrayed by Fleet Street? While certainly not a champion performance, Hamilton’s poor start can be attributed to a malfunctioning piece of software on his Mercedes car rather than driver error, and his two mistakes during the race - leaving the track after a botched attempt to overtake Rosberg and then sliding into Ricciardo on cold medium tyres - amounted to rare misjudgements rather than chronic aberrations. Every driver is entitled to a bad day at the office, including two-time world champions.

There’s no doubt that Hamilton should count himself lucky to have departed Hungary with his championship lead extended. But some of the hysterical condemnation which has greeted his performance is surely excessive. 
Rating out of ten: 5

Romain Grosjean has tended to go well here in the past, qualifying second and finishing third in 2012 and lining up third on the grid as well the following year. There were no such headlines this time around but Grosjean still clearly has an affinity with the place. The sight of him luridly oversteering his Lotus early in qualifying didn’t exactly bode well but things got better and he was able to make the top 10.

Matters continued to improve in the race and although Hamilton denied him sixth place – what would have been his best result of the season so far – in the closing stages it was a creditable performance (albeit with another two points on his super licence after an unsafe pit stop release). “An incredible race,” said Romain afterwards and we can’t argue with that. 
Rating out of ten: 7

It was a weekend to forget for Nico Rosberg who never found top gear during the Hungarian GP weekend.

The German never recovered from a disappointing Friday when he struggled to find a balanced set-up on his Mercedes, but given the W06’s pace advantage over the field, even with a bad setup Rosberg should have been on the podium.

The setback was a result of the team's error - “We need to apologise to Nico because on Friday there was a mistake in the configuration of the car which we didn’t discover until last night," Paddy Lowe told Sky Sports F1 after qualifying - but Rosberg was stuck on the backfoot for the rest of the weekend.

Friday’s problems also seemed to affect him mentally as he repeatedly questioned the team’s calls and their car performance data over the radio during qualifying and the race. Most notably he wanted medium tyres for the final stint to copy team-mate Lewis Hamilton rather than the faster soft compound.

But simply he should never have been in the position of worrying about his team-mate. With Hamilton’s woes, this was Rosberg’s chance to take victory and close in the championship battle. However, he couldn’t live with the pace of Sebastian Vettel and wasn’t even in a position to exploit the undercut at the first stop as Mercedes had at Silverstone.

Dicing with the Red Bulls late in the race showed just how far out of the ultimate Mercedes pace he was.

Rating out of ten: 4

As beggars can’t be choosers, Jenson Button had few complaints about finishing ninth in a race he started from 16th. But McLaren-Honda’s decision not to pit him under the Safety Car – rectified in the case of Alonso – was undoubtedly a mistake and one which left the former world champion the F1 equivalent of a sitting duck in the closing stages.

Still, two points is better than the nothing, which Button looked like scoring when race day dawned. 
Rating out of ten: 7

There might have been a fair few retirements but Marcus Ericsson's achievement in scoring a point can still be seen as a good result considering how Sauber generally struggled during the weekend. With a downforce-deficient car they had been expecting to, but tyres were also an issue. Doubtless the fall in track temperatures on race day helped, with Ericsson doing the rest. 
Rating out of ten: 7

Felipe Nasr qualified one place behind his team-mate and finished four seconds behind him in the race, handicapped by debris lodged in his car but on a track the team admitted afterwards they were glad to see the back of. Ericsson might not agree, but for both drivers the news that Sauber will retain them in 2016 was arguably the weekend's highlight. 
Rating out of ten: 6

The Hungaroring was never going to be an easy venue for Williams, but it seemed like Felipe Massa's mind was elsewhere all weekend, perhaps unsurprising after the funeral of Jules Bianchi earlier in the week. The Brazilian had worked closely with Bianchi during his time at Ferrari and was notably upset during the pre-race tribute on the starting grid. That might partly explain his performance; the rest can be attributed to the FW37 which lacks sufficient downforce for this type of venue. Things should improve at Spa next time out. 
Rating out of ten: 5

Despite low-downforce circuits such as Hungary being the Achilles heel of the Williams package, Valtteri Bottas was still on course for a respectable result with 20 laps remaining only for his race to be wrecked by a puncture that saw him plummet down the field. But with Ferrari still deliberating on their driver line-up for 2016, his current lean patch has been awkwardly timed.
Rating out of ten: 5

Where to start with a summary of Pastor Maldonado’s astonishing Hungarian GP? The Lotus driver was the recipient of no fewer than three penalties from the stewards during Sunday’s race - an undoubted record if only records existed for such matters. Although the infringements varied in detail – the first was for overtaking behind the Safety Car, the second for speeding in the pitlane, and the third for smacking into Sergio Perez’s Force India – the common denominator uniting each incident was that Maldonado was exclusively culpable. How much more patience can his sponsorship buy?
Rating out of ten: Zero

With no chance of racing the cars ahead, all Roberto Merhi can do is beat team-mate Will Stevens and this he duly did in qualifying by over half a second. The Spaniard led the opening exchanges in the battle at the back before making a very early stop on lap six which compromised his race. The fact that the stop was slow didn’t help him either. Nevertheless he was close enough to his team-mate to get back ahead when Stevens stopped 20 laps later and while the Briton would eventually retire, Merhi once again brought the car home to the chequered flag. 
Rating out of ten: 7

Don’t miss the F1 Midweek Report for all the analysis of the Hungarian GP. Reuters' F1 correspondent Alan Baldwin and The Daily Telegraph’s Daniel Johnson join Natalie Pinkham in the studio. Catch it at 8:30pm on Wednesday July 29 on Sky Sports F1.