How Button saved McLaren's day

We've had some pretty boring processions in Hungary over the 25 years of the event's history, but nobody could say that about the 2011 edition. On Sunday we saw a superb race, with once again three teams in contention and plenty of wheel-to-wheel action.

Of course, rain at the start and again in the last third of the race spiced up the action, but even if it had stayed dry all the way through, we would still have had an intriguing contest.

Although the wet first stage of the race was important, the main thing was to get through it safely. The real turning point came at half-distance, when teams finalised the strategy calls that would get them to the end of the race. Or, more accurately, it was one lap after half distance, which is when Fernando Alonso made his third stop.

Button took a perfectly-judged victory in Hungary © sutton-images.com

After the wet opening stint and the first dry stint on option tyres, everyone had a major decision to make - and for the frontrunners that was the choice between three and four stops.

Despite the use of wet tyres at the start meaning that drivers weren't obliged to use the prime or soft, it was impossible to get to the end on three sets of supersofts, so the prime would have to be called into action at some stage.

Four stops meant going inter-option-option-option-prime, with a short final stint on the more durable softs after all the supersofts were used up.

Three stops would be inter-option-option-prime, with a long run on the more durable soft.

Adding to the intrigue was the threat of rain. If you committed to that long final stint, and it rained, you would have to make an extra stop.

Go for the four-stop route, knowing you had to pit anyway, you might luck in if it rained at just the right time.

At half distance on lap 35, the order, and the age of the option tyres, looked like this:

Hamilton (9 laps, but from new and unused in qualifying)
Button (8 laps)
Vettel (7 laps)
Webber (10 laps
Alonso (10 laps)

On slightly older rubber than most of those ahead, and stuck behind Mark Webber, Alonso signalled that he was on a four-stop strategy when he came in for more options on lap 36. He immediately started doing some quick times, quick enough to suggest initially that his strategy would play out well. The question was how would everyone else respond?

Intriguingly, Red Bull did not pull Webber in immediately to fend off Alonso's successful undercut attempt - the team instead took a long view and kept him out for three more laps. When he came out of the pitlane on lap 39 he had indeed dropped well behind Fernando - but he had been put onto the prime, and intended to run 31 laps to the end on it.

It was around the time of the Alonso stop that we heard McLaren tell Lewis Hamilton: "We need this set to do another nine laps." Messages are always delayed, but a lot fewer than that passed before the driver came in on lap 40.

Webber's lap 39 stop should have beeen McLaren's alarm © sutton-images.com

So whose strategy would he follow - Alonso's or Webber's? When the team rolled out a set of supersofts, it was obvious that it was the former. Then over the next two laps Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button pitted, and both went the way of Webber.

"We were looking at Alonso's pace on the new options," said McLaren's Paddy Lowe. "That leads you to think that could be a quicker way to the end of the race, do an option-prime, and that's the route that Lewis picked.

"It gave you some cover against it raining, in that you'd need another pitstop anyway. So Lewis went that route and Jenson went the other route."

"We decided at the last stop to go onto the prime and give it a go to get to the end of the race," said Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.

"Lewis took another set of options that he was looking pretty hard on, so he wouldn't have got to the end in dry conditions on those.

"Jenson elected to take the same strategy as us, but we felt we would be better on the tyre at the end of the stint.

"Of course that didn't materialise because the rain came. It was looking like it was going to be a fascinating finish."

By the time it had all unfolded the order, with their intended strategies, looked like this:

Hamilton (on options and needing one more stop for primes)
Button (28-lap stint on primes)
Alonso (on options and needing one more stop for primes)
Vettel (29-lap stint on primes)
Webber (31-lap stint on primes)

The spread between the five of them was some 20s, and a fascinating denouement was on its way.

But, as at Monaco, we were robbed of the chance of seeing the race run its natural conclusion as the strategies unfolded.

This time it was rain rather than a red flag that upset things, and in fact it provided us with a more exciting - if less academically satisfying - conclusion than we might otherwise have had.

Prior to the rain's arrival, it was already becoming apparent that the four-stop/option choice was not working out.

After an initial burst of speed had given him a huge boost relative to Webber - albeit not enough to make up for that extra stop - Alonso's pace began to tail off, and he was soon passed for third by Vettel.

And almost from the start of his run Hamilton failed to generate enough pace to make it work.

"We thought the strategies would be broadly similar," said Lowe. "Not knowing how long the tyre would last, that was the uncertainty with the prime-to-the-end strategy.

"Lewis seemed to be having a much tougher time with his front tyre wear. When he was out at that point actually the prime was quicker, on Jenson.

"It was immediately evident that even without the rain problem, that was the wrong strategy."

Around lap 46, the rain returned. Still leading and desperate to make the best of the situation, Hamilton pushed a little too hard and spun.

Button got through, and at that point Hamilton's hopes of winning were dead and buried, unless he could make the rain work for him.

After a couple of laps the rain eased off, and Alonso was able to make his final stop for primes on lap 47. This was a tricky one for Ferrari, as there was a threat of more rain coming soon, but the team had to bring him in.

So now Button, Vettel, Webber and Alonso were all on primes and able to go to the end.

The one man who couldn't was Hamilton, and when the rain came back, heavier than before, it looked like he might luck in.

It was Nico Rosberg who kick-started a mini rush for intermediates, coming in on lap 50.

Just 46 seconds later Webber dashed in, and up and down the pitlane engineers urgently studied sector times and asked their drivers what state the track was in.

In retrospect it's easy to say this or that team made the wrong call, but these situations are always hugely complicated.

Hamilton made too many trips to the pits... © sutton-images.com

"It's a 50-50 thing at the end of the day," said Horner. "Mark was on the radio saying, 'It's inters,' and we couldn't disagree with him, because you're looking at the pitlane and it's wet, and cars are going off on track.

"You don't know whether that rain is going to stop or start, so it was right on the cusp, and obviously pretty much 50 per cent of the field, Lewis included, followed the same route.

"Sebastian was asking the same questions, but we thought, 'okay, at this point we can't cover both options,' so we split, and we left him and he managed those conditions very well, because it's very easy to make a mistake, and it came right for him.

"I think the radar at that point is hopeless! You've got to look up in the sky and see where the wind's coming from.

"We've been following the radar all day, and it's been not too accurate at picking out what's actually at the track. And it's such a fine rain as well."

After Webber, Vitaly Petrov, Rubens Barrichello, Heikki Kovalainen, Adrian Sutil, Vitantonio Liuzzi and Pastor Maldonado all came into the pitlane within 90s of Nico Rosberg - and then McLaren brought Hamilton in.

"We needed to stop anyway, and we'd seen quite a lot of people stop," said Lowe. "The radar was indicating that this was just the beginning of the rain, and it was going to get worse.

"Normally, you're better being earlier onto the wet tyre than late, so that's the way we went.

"That was a team call. It was in that balance point. A lap earlier he said, 'okay for dry.' But then the conditions were getting quickly worse, so we made that judgement, not him."

"We had the data, he didn't really have the data.

"Then the complication was that one tyre was better in S1, which was more wet than S2 and S3.

"So you're trying to make these split-second decisions, and you don't have the benefit of two or three laps to analyse, you're analysing sector by sector, and making a quick call.

"Even if you had that data it's immediately raining either more or less, so it's historical already."

Meanwhile the rest continued to struggle round on dry tyres, losing chunks of time for a couple of laps when inters were the thing to have.

And then the rain stopped, and just as quickly inters were completely useless. In fact Webber was in to get back onto slicks just 2m09s after Hamilton had gone the other way!

...which left him needing to pass Massa and Webber © sutton-images.com

"At the time his [dry] tyres were shot, he had to come in," said Whitmarsh of Hamilton's strategy.

"The weather radar said it was going to be raining. It was physically raining, so it would have been fairly strange to put dry tyres on at the point he came in.

"Half the field fitted intermediates at that point, so we weren't actually alone in the thought process. If you can have a crystal ball, then you can always get it better."

Hamilton had to go back to slicks after just two laps on inters, and this extra stop sent him further down the order. It all became academic anyway as his drive-through, for causing Paul di Resta to take avoiding action after his earlier spin, was announced.

"I think it was very harsh, but that's life," said Whitmarsh. "It wasn't an aggressive move was it? He just spun, he was correcting it.

"Paul had to go off, but I don't think Paul would have been demanding a penalty if you were to ask him. So I think it was a pretty harsh call."

Through all of this Button and Vettel had carried on round at the front, staying clear of any pit activity.

Their achievement should not be underestimated, not just in terms of keeping out of trouble, but also dealing with tyres that lost temperature over those few cold and wet laps in the middle, and which then had to be nursed to the end of the race.

It's worth noting that having been doing 1m24s, at the height of the rain Button ran a 1m41.2s lap, and Vettel a 1m45.6s, when they both ran wide at Turn 2 while ceding to the intermediate-shod Hamilton.

That shows how easy it is to lose huge chunks of time if you make the wrong call.

"I think Sebastian was relying on our feedback," said Horner. "We asked him to hang in there.

"He would possibly have been happy to hear 'Box for inters' at that stage. But then obviously the rain stopped within two minutes, and then the heat started coming back in the slicks, and then quickly the slicks became the tyre to be on.

"It's the type of call that can go either way for you. That call could arguably have won Mark the race, if it had continued to rain. It didn't..."

In the end, staying out was the right choice, and Button and Vettel reaped the dividends, as indeed did Alonso, who salvaged third from his four-stopper when he could have ended up fourth or fifth in the normal run of events.

Fernando Alonso Ferrari 2011 Hungarian Grand Prix © sutton-images.com

"It was an interesting race in that sense, we saw half the field gamble one way on that second lot of rain, and half the field the other way," said Lowe.

"Unfortunately, Lewis got the wrong end of that gamble. Thankfully we had a split strategy, you might say. It wasn't deliberately done that way - each team works independently in deciding what's best for them.

"Why didn't Lewis win? I don't know what order [of importance], but first off putting options instead of the prime, but he may not have made the prime work anyway, because of this front tyre thing.

"Then there was the spin, and spin-turning it in front of traffic, which looked pretty ambitious at the time, so I think that was a bit of a fair cop really.

"If he hadn't done that he'd have lost more places, he would have had to wait for Vettel and everyone else to come through.

"Then the drive-through, then the wet decision - he did well to come fourth when you add all that up."

Whitmarsh meanwhile was full of praise for Button's drive - and had no regrets about the choices with Hamilton's car.

"Jenson comfortably held a buffer, and opened it when he needed to," said the McLaren boss.

"I think it was a great race for him, he looked after his tyres, he did a great job. I think we made the right calls.

"With Lewis arguably we didn't, but we made the calls based on the circumstances and information we had.

"I don't regret it, it's not one of those races where you think, 'Damn, we really should have done something different, it was obvious.' I don't think it was obvious.

"I wish we'd done something different but we're not angry with ourselves for the calls we made in that race."

And yet again Vettel consolidated his championship lead with second place.

Horner was happy enough with that: "I think all things considered on a day like today, when you've got a lot more ability for things to go wrong than right, to come away second having extended his lead in the drivers' championship after the conditions that we faced in that race is a really positive result.

"I think the McLarens were quick at certain stages of the race, we were quick at other stages of the race, and it would have been fascinating had it been dry to the end after that last stop.

"We thought we were looking in good shape, we'd elected to take a different strategic route by going on the prime tyre, and then it rained.

"And for probably two or three laps, the slick was the wrong tyre to be on, and 50 per cent of the grid came in for an inter, and arguably for those two laps, it was the right thing to do.

"But then the rain stopped, and therefore an additional stop for Mark probably cost a podium today. I think he would have been third, because again he would have run to the end."

Now we head into the summer break, and when we come back it will be at Spa. And that's a track where we might just get a little more rain...