After deciding to pass up the Monaco Grand Prix in favour of the Indianapolis 500, Fernando Alonso not surprisingly found driving an IndyCar around an oval very different from anything he had encountered in 15 years of Formula 1.
"For one thing," he told me at Indy, "you have to turn right on the straight, and that sends some weird messages - you arrive at a corner, and you just release the pressure in your hands, and the car starts to steer to the left..."
At the Speedway that characteristic is built into the cars' set-up, but last Sunday, for reasons Ferrari were not immediately able to explain, Sebastian Vettel found himself dealing with something similar at the Hungaroring.