MOTOR SPORT HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX:JUST OVER a month ago Jaime Alguersuari came to Hungaroring in Budapest and raced his way to a solid if not particularly inspiring sixth place.
In all, the appearance, in front of a small crowd, in a relatively small Renault World Series series probably merited a couple of lines in the specialist motorsport press, media for whom the series slots in under the banner of “proving ground”.
Five weeks later and the young Spaniard is back, this time as the new Scuderia Toro Rosso recruit, drafted in to replace the disappointing Frenchman Sebastién Bourdaisin. The harsh glare of the media spotlight is pointing directly at him and declaring the 19-year-old, the youngest ever Formula One racer, is “the most dangerous man” in the sport such is his inexperience.
Despite his lack of experience with a Formula One car, and the raised eyebrows of many established drivers – championship contender Mark Webber insisting “Formula One shouldn’t be a learning school” – Alguersuari was left to make his point in the only way left open to him. He navigated his race car through 82 laps of the tortuously twisting Hungaroring yesterday, error free and less than two seconds adrift of session leader Lewis Hamilton. Sure, in Formula One terms two seconds is an epic gap but afterwards Alguersuari insisted he had done what was asked of him and answered his critics.
“I don’t really care what other people say about me,” he said. “I just do my work. I’m here because Red Bull asked me to race. As I would in F3 or World Series or GP2 or whatever. I just drive. That’s my job. That’s my life and what I enjoy doing. I feel proud for sure, I did a good job today.”
The driver has grabbed the lion’s share of attention in the run-up to the weekend, but now the focus will shift to the increasingly fragile-looking lead Jenson Button holds at the top of the drivers’ championship. After back-to-back wins for Red Bull racing in Britain and Germany, the Brawn driver’s lead has been cut to 21 points with both Webber and Silverstone-winning team-mate Sebastian Vettel chasing the Briton down.
Yesterday, Webber was fastest of the title-contesting trio, the Australian ending the day fourth, despite a hydraulic failure late on.
Vettel, meanwhile climbed to sixth while the McLaren’s of Hamilton and team-mate Heikki Kovalainen closed out the top slots of the timesheet.
Button, though, was left languishing in 13th. “I don’t know where we stand after today,” he said. “I was 13th, but we’re quicker than that, and I feel we’re in reasonable shape . . . Certainly we have everything to play for this weekend. They [Red Bull Racing] will have us to contend with here – in the last races they didn’t – and we’ll be pushing them a lot more.”
Stability agreement
A new commercial agreement to secure the stability of Formula One until at least 2012 should be ready for signing by the end of next week, the sport’s governing body said yesterday. The FIA said in a statement that negotiations had been completed between them, all 13 of the teams due to compete next season and the commercial rights holders.
