The Hungarian GP is upon us and that also means that the summer break is right around the corner.

We know that will make your eyes wetter than the track last week but, unlike Spa, we don’t expect any major delay as you dry them and keep reading.

First things first let’s take a look towards the race then head on down to the marbles to see our thoughts on why racing in the wet is so hard these days.

So, if you listened to the pod already (and if not why not??), then you’ll know Brian thinks the Hungaroring looks like an engine warning light.'

In fairness to him, he has a point.

Anyway, last year saw the infamous moments between the McLaren pit wall and Lando as they pleaded with him to let Oscar by and restore the order prior to the pitstops.

It meant that we had something to talk about as Hungary is not renowned for it’s overtaking action. In fact doing a bit of research online shows it’s usually placed only behind Monaco & Imola when looking at races with the lowest amounts of overtakes.

The reason for this?

Well the Hungaroring has just a single long straight. While it has two DRS zones, the second is a super short one after turn 1 so really you have to get setup for an attack down the straight into the braking zone.

It means qualifying is super important here in order to lock in good track position. When you factor in it hardly ever rains here you won’t even have that to pray for should you qualify lower down the grid.

Only a handful of winners have come from way back with the majority coming from the first two rows and a smattering from row 3.

Although pole might not be the advantage you might think as since 2020 only Lewis Hamilton has won from pole. That was actually back in 2020 meaning under the current regulations no one has ever won from pole here.

So, you need to be near the front but not pole then to stand a good chance?

Good luck with that then!

Finally, if you want to know who we think will stand on the podium then check out our podium predictions

What’s in the vault this week?

Unfortunately there the vault saw as much action this week as a set of full wet tires.

Normal service to be resumed next week

Diving into the marbles that make up the dirty side of the track is where you’ll find some subscriber only content!

There was a lot of outcry on social media this week regarding whether or not they should have gone racing sooner (or even from the first start) in Spa last weekend.

The main question was visibility which prompted the good old statement from some quarters of “We used to race in conditions like this. The sport has gone soft”.

Well it is true that F1 used to race in the wet a lot more than they seem to these days. It’s also true that maybe the FIA are a bit more sensitive to conditions in Spa given it’s recent tragic history.

However, there does seem a very good reason for why it’s just so hard to see things now.

Ground effect cars.

Back in 2022, F1 heralded in a set of regulations that re-introduced ground effect cars for the first time since they were banned back in 1983.

Since then, and F1 car has relied on essentially being an upside down airplane that uses airflow to push it down into the track rather than create lift as is the case with am airplane.

The floor looked like this and created no “suction”.

The 2022 cars look like this underneath.

What all these fancy shapes do is cleverly create air pressure differences that literally suck the car down onto the surface meaning less reliance on the aero surfaces of the car generating downwards pressure.

Suction means not only is the car pulled down to the ground, but on a wet track more water is being displaced from the surface.

Another consideration of the new regulations was to try and get rid of the dirty air directly behind a car so that it did not cause as much turbulence for the car behind in the hope of increasing how closely a car could follow without losing performance.

The rears of the car were designed to throw the air “up and out” and therefore leave the air directly behind less, well, dirty.

So when you suck more water up and then throw it further into the air you kinda get this effect.

These two pictures show a pre & post ground effect car at pretty much the same point on the Kemmel straight and both on full wet blue tires.

Now I know we don’t know exactly how much surface water in each or what speed each car is doing but you can see the rooster tail is more dense and climbs higher in the newer car.

When seen more from the front you can see that even under safety car conditions and on inters, the cars last week were throwing up huge, dense clouds of rain. They are barely moving in F1 terms while behind the SC!

Maybe next year the new regulations that will wind back reliance on ground effect will mean that we won’t get such huge plumes of water being generated.

Whatever transpires, while we were frustrated at the lack of action last week, the safety of the drivers has to be the main concern and not being able to see where you are going at 200mph just doesn’t sound a safe option to us.