Paddock Diary: Hungarian Grand Prix day two

Is the Hungarian Grand Prix a crucial race for Valtteri Bottas’s Mercedes future? The word in the Hungaroring paddock is the pressure from Esteban Ocon is mounting, says @DieterRencken.

7am

Skies are overcast as I prepare for the first day of running at the Hungaroring. While Hungary usually greets us with hot weather, we’ve had a few dramatic wet races here in the past. First among them has to be Jenson Button’s breakthrough 2006 win.

That was a strange one for me: As had become customary, his team’s sponsor Lucky Strike had charged me with coordinating media activities for Button’s annual promotional visit to South Africa, which was scheduled for Monday. Thus I left Budapest on Saturday evening as part of the advance party, and unfortunately missed his maiden victory…

9am

Head for circuit – as per usual on Fridays, I’ll partake in Williams’ Friday breakfast, so I skip the ‘Swedish buffet’ at my hotel. Traffic is light, and the 13km trip takes around 20 minutes – although I smile broadly en route: During race weekend a ‘special F1 lane’ inside the motorway’s yellow line is open to pass holders, most of whom travel at the regulatory 130kph speed limit.

Today its faster to use the ‘public’ lane on account of a medallioned, chest-wigged geezer in a red Lamborghini driving at half that, its V10 engine aurally bouncing off the rev limiter in what seems like first gear.

11am

As I head towards the media centre for first practice I spy someone close to Esteban Ocon’s camp, who indicates a race deal with Mercedes for 2020 is in the offing and ready for signing as soon as ‘next week’, contingent upon Valtteri Bottas’s performances this weekend. Asked what the alternatives are, the source says “Renault or Haas for the other one…” The ‘silly season’ truly is in full swing.

• Silly season or sensible season? The state of the driver market for 2020

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1pm

Lunch at Ferrari: small helpings of chicken wings and salads, which do me after my late-ish breakfast, and then hit the trail. As related yesterday, it’s clear Spain’s potential re-emergence on the 2020 F1 calendar has created headaches for the championship in terms of logistics, engine usage and manpower planning. True, a $20m fee for what would be (at this stage) a one-off event is a welcome boost, but at what hidden costs?

I’m also told that some Polish fans are up in arms over the lack of their national flag in the paddock. It seems the Polish flag was hung upside down, and therefore resembled Monaco’s flag. Thus Charles Leclerc has two flags, and Robert Kubica none.

“We kindly ask you to change one of the two Monegasque flags into a Polish one (it should be the other way around),” reads the fan complaint to race promoters. If only this was the total of Kubica’s concerns this weekend as he continues to plug away in Williams’ uncompetitive FW42, whose pace he euphemistically described as “questionable” after grabbing an opportunity to score the team’s first point last weekend.

5pm

Interview time, and I banter with Romain Grosjean after asking him whether he would be willing submit to team orders should they be invoked, and let his team-mate pass if it comes to that.

“Overtaking is like sex,” the Haas driver tells me, “if one partners doesn’t want it, it doesn’t happen. That seems a strange analogy given F1’s rather gladiatorial image.

The likes of Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton are not known for co-operating when it comes to being overtaken, are they? Nor is Kevin Magnussen – perhaps that tells us something about how Haas have ended up in this situation.

• Grosjean: Haas team orders will favour whichever driver is quicker

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6pm

When I ask Andrew Green, Racing Point’s technical director, whether pre- and in-season testing should be reduced should the Spanish Grand Prix be confirmed for next year, he suggests that the current pre-season test format (a pair of four-day sessions) serves little real purpose and that it should be changed to a single five-day session, thereby saving a week upfront.

It seems an eminently sensible solution to me given the simulation tools available to teams. But the season-opening 2020 Australian Grand Prix has already been confirmed for March 15th, so tweaking the test format may not give the extra room needed later in the calendar. It will be fascinating to see how Liberty resolves its first big calendar test…

Whatever, should no draft calendar be released by Sunday night it will mark the first time in 10 years (at least) that no schedule is been presented to teams before they embark on their summer break.

8pm

Pack up and head for parking lot ahead of hitting the road. Given the weather an early night beckons, so I grab sandwiches at a filling station to enjoy while catching up on the day’s other happenings. It somehow seems strange that F1 should be wrestling with its Spanish issue when, due to the still-unresolved matter of Brexit, it does not even know whether the eight teams based to some extent in Britain will enjoy unimpeded travel to Barcelona after October.

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2019 Hungarian Grand Prix

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