Hungarian Grand Prix<\/a> was held in a park in Budapest called Nepliget in 1936, with the circuit remaining open for racing until 1972. However, the country didn\u2019t host a Formula 1 race until the championship made its debut in the country in 1986, making it the only race at the time to be held behind the Iron Curtain.<\/p>\nAn early plan suggested refreshing the circuit at Nepliget to make it more similar to Monaco, but it was eventually decided that a brand new venue would be built just outside of the capital city, and the Hungaroring was impressively constructed in less than nine months.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s undergone a number of changes over the last four decades, including the removal of a temporary chicane that was originally in place at Turn 3 to avoid an underground spring. The most recent major alteration to the track came in 2003, when the main straight was lengthened and the first hairpin tightened to encourage overtaking.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the circuit like to drive?<\/p>\n
Despite its four Straight Mode zones (more on that later), the Hungaroring is actually notorious for its relative lack of straights, leading to its frequent comparison to the karting tracks that many of the drivers spent their childhoods on.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s narrower than the historic circuits of Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps that preceded this round, and is made up of sets of corners that feed into each other, so a consistent rhythm is key here \u2013 nail the entry of a corner and you\u2019ll be rewarded in the following turns.<\/p>\n
The layout does mean that overtaking is more difficult, with most moves executed at the beginning of the lap, but its twisty nature and lack of emphasis on sheer horsepower make the Hungaroring an enjoyable challenge for drivers.<\/p>\n
Jolyon Palmer, former Renault F1 driver, explained: \u201cBudapest feels like a small circuit when you\u2019re there but there\u2019s plenty that goes into it with 14 corners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first sector is basically two corners: a big braking zone at Turn 1, which is a relatively straightforward right-hander but quite bumpy in the braking area, so it can induce some front locking, before heading into Turn 2, which is slightly downhill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe middle sector is one of those ones where you\u2019ve got to find a rhythm because out of pretty much every corner you need to be positioned for the next corner coming through it. You go from Turn 4 into 6, then you get a tiny breather, but it carries you through the next sweeping section, building speed all the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the final sector, sometimes the tyres are starting to overheat and you start to scramble around for a little bit of grip there. In the race, you\u2019ve got to think about setting up your overtake coming out of Turn 14, the final corner, because that is your one chance to do something into Turn 1 and, if not, into Turn 2. If you don\u2019t get it done there, you\u2019re probably going to be following for the next lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had some good battles here in GP2, and while it\u2019s not easy to overtake in Hungary, you can. The layout of the circuit lends itself to overtaking at Turn 2, particularly as you can go inside or outside, so it can be hard to defend. It\u2019s a nice one to have some battles at.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the competition continuing to heat up, F1 is back in action this weekend with the Hungarian Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-818610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}