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Jenson Button: Rainmaster. Like it or lump it, that is the tag that is now close to being permanently affixed to the McLaren man's back, possibly replacing one saying 'kick me'. When the Button PR machine and the UK media agreed to label Button's two early-season GP wins in mixed conditions at the start of 2010 as not simply flukey wins born from desperate tyre strategy gambles, and but instead as evidence that Our Jense was a master of intermediate track conditions, the tag always seemed a bit clunky.

But, since becoming the go-to guy with the 'pre-race favourite' tag once the track gets a bit moist and drizzly, Button has come up trumps. This win wasn't quite as spectacular as his remarkable recovery from last place to first in Canada, and had plenty to thank Lewis Hamilton's side of the garage for, as a combination of driver and strategic muck-ups eliminated the early race leader from contention, but nevertheless it was another race where Button was pretty much peerless in the drizzle.

Despite the focus on Button's victory after the race though, the more significant result was Sebastian Vettel's second place. After the 'crisis' of Germany, when the championship leader shockingly finished as low as 4th place, he was back into the top two this time around. The German extended his championship lead once again in Hungary with a patient and largely anonymous second place, to move 85 points clear of the chasing pack. While his rivals are now enjoying their share of race wins, the championship itself is still heading in a fairly obvious direction.

Practice and Qualifying

From the start of the weekend, there were clear signs that this might well be McLaren's - and specifically Lewis Hamilton's - weekend to entertainingly throw away somehow. Following on from his victory at the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring less than a week ago, Hamilton topped the rather quiet opening practice session from Vettel, with the only incident of note coming when Mark Webber damaged his RB7's nosecone in a run-in with an unforgiving section of Armco barrier at turn nine.

Hamilton similarly dominated the second Friday practice session, which was an altogether quieter affair despite Hungary's ever-slippery and green track surface. By which we mean Webber didn't crash in this one. Behind the dominant McLaren came Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and his team mate Button, with the Red Bulls looking very ordinary indeed in 4th (Vettel) and 5th (Webber). Something seemed slightly amiss at the championship-leading squad.

So much so, that the team opted to break F1's boarding school-esque curfew for the first time in 2011. The new rule, part of F1's clunky 'resource restriction agreement' between the teams, means that from lights out at 2am through to the start of the next working day at 8am, no work is permitted in the garages up and down the pit lane. But, because this is F1 and nobody can honestly promise to stick to any rule all of the time, teams are allowed to veto the curfew on four occasions per year, and RBR duly did.

Whatever the mechanics managed to do in between chugging relentlessly (pun intended) on cans of Red Bull and double checking the small print of their contracts concerning overtime payments, it seemed to do the trick. Vettel came back from his disappointing Friday form to hit the front in his usually dominant fashion in the final hour of practice on Saturday morning, with his rivals appearing suddenly unable to do anything about his pace.

But there was one curveball for qualifying, in the form of Mr Hamilton. The McLaren driver had not set a representative time to challenge Vettel during the usual flurry of qualifying simulations at the end of FP3, after a brake issue led to him merrily skipping the braking point at turn one and knackering up his fresh Pirelli super-soft tyres. For qualifying, he was the big unknown standing in between Vettel and another top spot.

Throughout the qualifying session, Hamilton was quick - very quick. He was faster than Vettel in Q1, and the merest fraction behind him in Q2 - albeit with the pair of them playing second fiddle to the slightly incongruous form of Alonso in both phases of the session - and the Q3 tussle for pole quickly became a private battleground between the two.

After the first runs of a hectic session, it was advantage Hamilton, with Vettel behind him and the German perhaps contemplating a third straight qualifying session where he was beaten to his preferred grid slot. But while there remains question marks over Red Bull's race pace, the RB7 and Vettel combination remain a frighteningly good prospect on Saturday afternoon, and Vettel again produced a lap when it mattered to pip Hamilton to top spot.

Hamilton did make a mistake on his final run, and the team appeared to be slightly unhappy about missing out on what would have been their first pole for over a year, but the McLaren man at least secured another front row start, and had his impressive race pace to unleash on Vettel on Sunday. He would be backed up for the race by Button, who qualified an uncharacteristically impressive third.

Even more shocking was Felipe Massa's performance, with the Brazilian taking advantage from an untidy Q3 performance from Alonso to outqualify his team mate for the first time in 17 races and claim fourth place. Alonso settled for fifth, but despite seeing his early weekend pace vanish again when it mattered, he remained confident for Sunday. "It seems that when it's time for Q3, Red Bull has a magic button that suddenly makes them go faster," he muttered conspiratorially, "But then it seems the button switches off in the race..."

Mark Webber's magic button didn't even work in Q3, with the Australian lagging behind the frontrunners all through the session despite his recent run of pole positions. Once again, issues with his DRS wing and other such excuses meant that his performance looked worse than the Australian really was, but he admitted that even without his car problems, he wouldn't have been a contender to make it three pole positions in a row. "I did my best," he mused sadly, "But in the end, [1:19s] is a different zone to me."

Behind the despondent Webber came Nico Rosberg, inhabiting his usual narrow performance band miles behind the front six but comfortably ahead of the rest of the midfield. Adrian Sutil was delighted with eighth place for Force India, ahead of Michael Schumacher, while Sauber's Sergio Perez pulled a 'let's not bother setting a lap' tactic having made it into Q3, saving tyres at the expense of only starting 10th.

The Race

As is becoming something of a default situation at grands prix recently, the track was merrily doused with a sprinkling of rainwater before the start, adding credence to the theory that Bernie Ecclestone has already managed to install his sprinkler system plan in the sport using some sort of secret government-sourced rain-making machine. The whole field started on intermediate tyres, and the treacherous conditions provided by the combination of the green track and a fresh surface layer of water became plain to see when firstly Massa went off on his lap to the dummy grid, and then Rosberg had an off-track moment of his own during the formation lap.

There was no doubt it was slippery then, but Vettel found some decent traction off the start line to rocket into an early lead, leaving the rest of the field for dead on the run to the first turn. The McLaren boys enjoyed some side-by-side action through the first few turns, going as far as to gently nuzzle their wheels together on the exit of turn one, while the big movers at the start were the Mercedes cars, with Rosberg clearly having imbibed whatever Schumacher has been having before races so far in 2011 and matching his team mate's rocket start for once to leap up to 4th. Schumie himself slotted into 5th ahead of the two Ferraris and a slow-starting Webber, who held seventh through the first few corners, but lost out to Massa on the exit of turn four.

Despite their quick starts though, the Mercedes drivers were still bereft of race pace, and Schumacher was soon passed by Alonso out of the final turn on lap 1, kicking off yet another painful Sunday for the seven-time champion and the Mercedes team, as Schumacher was then forced to cede best to both Massa and Webber in quick succession after that move. A couple of laps later, the Spaniard was past the second German car of Rosberg with a neat switchback in turn one to complete his recovery back up to the tail end of the frontrunning pack, where Baby Schumie led from Hamilton, who was already pulling away from Button.

It quickly became obvious that Vettel's strange lack of performance with his car in damp conditions was back, something that was most strikingly obvious in the closing stages of the Canadian GP when Button caught him with all the ease of a Pagani Zonda hunting down a milk float. Throughout the opening laps, Hamilton stalked his prey, pushing hard enough to enjoy a lurid powerslide out of turn two on the second lap. The British driver managed to get alongside on the run down to turn one on lap three, before going wheel-to-wheel with the German through turn three, trying and failing to pull off the sort of brave/ludicrous move around the outside of his rival that had seen him net the lead of the German GP from Alonso one week ago.

This time it didn't come off, as Vettel proved to his doubters that he could hold his own in an on-track fight to some extent, and wasn't just a one-trick automaton who got completely out of his depth when asked to do anything other than mindlessly count down the laps to the flag in the lead. Hamilton was given a boost when the race director randomly switched the DRS wings on from the end of lap three, and he was then able to have another nibble into the turn one hairpin on lap four. The two leaders switched to and fro as they dragged themselves up to turn two, with this time Hamilton managing to lay claim to the inside line. But Vettel braved it out around the outside and kept the lead, with Hamilton having to gather up another heart-stopping slide on the exit of the corner.

A lap later, it looked like Vettel had things covered again after blocking the line at turn one, and then preventing Hamilton from another move down the inside into the left-hander at turn two. But just as he had done in Canada, he eventually bowed to the relentless pressure from behind, sliding too deep into the second corner and allowing Hamilton through, to end what had been a truly edge-of-the-seat scrap for the lead in favour of the McLaren driver. He'd proved he can race, but alas for the championship leader he also proved that he has a breaking point that it is sometimes all too easy to find.

From there on Hamilton looked to have the race to himself. By lap eight, he had the lead out over five seconds from the German Red Bull man, with Button a comfortable distance behind Vettel. But if the fight at the front was calming down, the scrap behind kept everyone entertained as the track dried. Alonso's quick recovery back to fourth was ruined on lap four when he ran off the road at turn four, dropping him back behind Rosberg. His frustration at being stuck behind the tardy W02 led to a second mistake, when he ran wide again and dropped behind Massa, though he was quickly back past the Brazilian down into turn one at the start of lap seven.

Massa's afternoon got even worse a lap later, when he erred a wheel into too much of the wet stuff and rotated his car at turn two, spinning off backwards and clouting the wall at slow speed with his rear wing. He rejoined in ninth place, as Webber, Schumacher and the fast-starting Force India of Paul di Resta all moved up a place, and at least had the excuse of a damaged rear wing endplate from his biff with the wall to blame for his slowish pace for the rest of the afternoon. In better Ferrari news, Alonso dealt with Rosberg for fourth at turn one with a neat DRS-assisted pass. 

All through the action up front, the track was now visibly drying, with the rain moving away from the track for now. From the start of lap 10, the cars started to make the move to slicks, with Webber and Massa the first of the semi-frontrunners to make the move. For a moment it looked like the switch that early was a mistake, with Webber dropping behind Jaime Alguersuari's Toro Rosso when he ran wide at turn one on the still-damp part of the track, but almost immediately he was setting fastest sector times, and that was enough for the rest of the field to make the move over the next few laps.

The stops didn't allow the order to change too much, with Hamilton resuming in the lead - after a brief and mildly enjoyable battle with the late-stopping Mercedes of Schumacher for the lead before the German made his own stop - from Vettel and Button, but if Vettel wasn't particularly confident on the intermediates, he appeared even less so on his cold slicks, and Button got a run on the German out of the first turn on lap 14 to make the pass for second into turn two. At virtually the same time, Webber utilised his up-to-speed slicks to blast past Alonso for fourth.

With the track now dry, and the field on slicks, and with this still being the Hungaroring, the next phase of the race was a quiet affair. By lap 20, Hamilton was in complete command, 9.1 seconds ahead of Button, who was controlling a 1.5 second gap back to Vettel. Webber was left holding off Alonso in a super-close but Hungaroring-spec processional fight for fourth, with Rosberg now dropping back at a rate of knots in his paceless Mercedes. The rest of the top ten saw di Resta, Schumacher, Massa and Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber fill out the points-paying places.

As the second stints came to an end, the somewhat stereotypical definition of the counterpoint between McLaren's two British world champions manifested itself, as Hamilton reached the end of the useful life of his Pirelli super-softs comfortably before Button, the 2009 champion taking chunks of time out of his lead to ensure that he was only 4.3 seconds behind by the end of lap 25. Hamilton responded with his second stop for another set of the super-grippy Pirellis, as the almost-interesting second pit stop phase began to play itself out.

The pit window itself was slightly disrupted by a bizarre retirement for Renault's Nick Heidfeld. The German suffered a delay in his stop, leaving him jacked up at full revs for too long, which resulted in an exhaust breaking inside his left sidepod. The Lotus-emblazoned car came down the pit lane with smoke billowing out of the side of the car, and when he finally managed to park the car at the pit exit, it had burst into flames, the side of the car then exploding as marshals tended to the flames and spewing debris right across the pit exit. Heidfeld was unhurt, and the safety car was not called for, but it led to some nervy moments as the drivers picked their way through the remains of the Renault.

The order itself again didn't shift around too much with the stops, with drivers not able to exploit any undercut as they had at previous races. Hamilton led on lap 32 by 6.9 seconds from Button, with Vettel third some 11.7 seconds off the lead - having embarked on a questionably long second stint which yielded him no gain in either track position or tyre strategy - but well ahead of the ongoing Webber/Alonso scrap. Further back was Kobayashi, up to sixth having opted for one less stop than the rest of the midfielders, ahead of Massa - who was now released from his fight with Schumacher when the German firstly spun as the two went side-by-side on lap 29, and then promptly retired, possibly out of shame at having lost a place to Massa. Rosberg, who was now oddly running on the harder prime Pirellis and had also conceded a place to Massa thanks to a lack of grip, di Resta and the non-stopped Williams of Rubens Barrichello completed the top ten.

With the race still going all Hungaroring up front, there was some brief entertainment as Kobayashi's efforts to push himself into a different pit strategy fell apart, as he was forced to cede best to first Massa on his far more suitable tyres as he ghosted past into the first turn, and then finally gave up his fight on his knackered tyres by pitting to allow Rosberg and the following pack to gain a place. With very little else of note happening, Alonso made a call to try and jump the immovable object of Webber with some Pirelli-spec irresistible force, taking another set of super-softs in another pit stop and then utilising his fresher tyres to ensure that he was ahead of the Australian when he made his own stop for the Pirelli softs.

As the rest of the pit window played itself out, Hamilton and McLaren made their first of an entertaining and race-changing series of errors. With Alonso having taken super-softs, thereby locking himself into another pit stop, Hamilton copied that strategy when he pitted from the lead. But his other rivals, and Button - who had again eked out an extra couple of laps on his super-softs - and Vettel in particular, opted for the prime soft Pirellis for their next stint, planning to make those tyres last to the end of the race. Added to that, their pace wasn't exactly sluggish, and the leading McLaren was looking a bit second-rate all of a sudden. By lap 45, Hamilton was a mere 6.3 seconds in the lead, and not appearing to have the pace to extend that to anything like the margin he would need to make an extra stop.

Things then took an even worse turn for Hamilton, as the rain returned to the track in the form of a brief shower. The intensity of the burst of precipitation was enough to catch the race leader completely off-guard, with Hamilton spinning at the exit of turn seven on lap 47 and ceding the lead to Button in sensational fashion. The former race leader then compounded what was ostensibly a minor error when, in his hurried efforts to spin the car around and get going again, he slightly cack-handedly forced di Resta to take avoiding action across the grass. Unsurprisingly, the race stewards chose to take a closer look at that moment.

But for the moment, the fight for the lead raged, and even though it featured two team mates, it was as frantic as they come. Hamilton quickly got back up to speed after his spin and sat on Button's wing for a couple of laps, as the drizzle continued to moisten up the track, and at turn two on lap 51, Button ran off in a process that could have been described as 'doing a Vettel', to allow Hamilton back past. But back came Button down the start/finish straight at the start of lap 52 to retake the place, before Hamilton attacked his team mate again at turn two, Button again slithered too wide, and Hamilton was back up the inside to retake top spot and cause a mass unclenching on the McLaren pit wall.

What looked like an advantage for Hamilton, though, turned out to be a reflexive disadvantage. Now the leading McLaren, he got first dibs on strategy calls, and with the drizzle still falling he followed the lead of drivers like Rosberg and Webber by pitting for intermediates at the end of lap 52, he and the team figuring that with his super-soft tyres beginning to expire, he needed another stop either way. Button, who revealed after the race that he had made the call to stay out on slicks rather than queue behind his team mate, moved back into the lead, and it would turn out to be a lead that he would never lose.

Hamilton rejoined in third place, but the hammer blows to his hopes of a win now came thick and fast. Just as the drizzle cleared up and it became obvious that the switch to inters had been the wrong call, the McLaren driver was handed a drive-through penalty for his dangerous recovery from his spin. The challenge to Button's glory from within McLaren had been ended. All that remained was Vettel, who moved up to second after Hamilton's penalty, some 4.4 seconds off the race leader, and Alonso, a further 15 seconds down the road but having benefited when he made his switch to the Pirelli softs to take him to the end during the brief shower.

Button, though, was not to be beaten, and he went on to control the gap to Vettel comfortably over the final ten laps to take win number two of the year - in his 200th GP to boot, and secure the perfect response to his pair of luckless retirements in the last two races. The championship leader was forced to see his pole-sitting grid slot only yield second place, but extended his championship lead nevertheless, while Alonso took his fourth podium finish in a row in a performance that was riddled with errors, the Spaniard adding a late spin to his two earlier off-track excursions.

The main fight of the final laps was for fourth place. Hamilton rejoined in sixth place after his drive-through, behind both Webber and Massa, the Australian having passed the Brazilian shortly after Hamilton emerged from the pit lane in a neat move in the DRS zone. The McLaren man channeled his frustrations into firstly chasing down Massa and passing him fairly comfortably into turn six, for there is no other way of passing 2011-spec Felipe. Then, Hamilton set about closing up on Webber, and was eventually rewarded in his persistence when Webber was blocked by the chronically-slow Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi, which was still trying and failing to make a contrary tyre strategy work. Hamilton pounced, made the move, and fourth place was his.

A dejected Webber was left with fifth, knowing that but for his ultimately incorrect call to temporarily switch to inters, he could possibly have even sneaked a podium. Still, he preserved his odd run of form in 2011, which manages to be both impressive and a bit naff at the same time. Twelve races into the season, and Webber is yet to finish outside the top five, but he is also yet to win and has only finished second once.

Massa toddled home in sixth place, with di Resta coming through an epic fight for the tail-end points over the final few laps with a whole gaggle of cars to secure his best-ever F1 finish in seventh. An incredible performance from Sebastien Buemi saw him come from 23rd on the grid to take 8th (more about him in a bit), while Rosberg could only recover to 9th after his own erroneous switch to inters. The second Toro Rosso of Alguersuari took the final point in 10th place, despite having a late spin following a move up the inside of Kobayashi that could most politely be described as optimistic.

Kobayashi eventually dawdled home in 11th, having been forced to make a final stop despite his late stint faffing, while Vitaly Petrov was a dismal 12th in the sole surviving Renault. Rubens Barrichello managed 13th in the 'best' of the Williams cars to make the finish, ahead of the two star performers from qualifying, Sutil and Perez who both put themselves out of contention with lap one incidents. The latter also picked up a drive-through in the middle of the race for passing under the waved yellow flags covering Heidfeld's fiery exit.

Also delayed with a drive-through was Pastor Maldonado, his for speeding his way down the pit lane in his Williams, and the Venezuelan ended the race in 16th. Best of the newbies home was Timo Glock's Virgin, ahead of Daniel 'Web 2.0' Ricciardo, who secured his best finish of his brief F1 career to date in 18th. He beat Virgin's Jerome d'Ambrosio - who suffered a slightly bizarre spin in the pit lane during the late rain shower - and his team mate Tonio Liuzzi, who was the last car home in 20th place.

The only cars to join early dropouts Flaming Lord Heidfeld and Schumacher in retirement were the pair of Team Lotus cars, with both Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen dropping out at opposite ends of the race distance with similar mechanical issues.

It was Jenson Button victorious then, to draw him level with his team mate on wins for the season. But the really telling statistic for the weekend lay elsewhere. For the third time in a row, early-season dominator Sebastian Vettel had been kept off the top step of the podium. And yet in that three race gap, he has extended his championship lead from 77 to 85 points.

So even when he's not winning, Vettel still seems to win. And that, perhaps more than anything else, is the mark of a champion-elect.

Driver of the Race

Sebastien Buemi - There were plenty of contenders for this. Both McLaren drivers were brilliant (at times), Vettel rallied well, Paul di Resta secured his best-ever F1 finish and Felipe Massa somehow outqualified his team mate. But from 23rd on the grid to 8th place is a brilliant performance in anyone's book, especially from a driver under as much pressure in 2011 as Buemi clearly is from Red Bull's burgeoning young driver stable. In truth, his recovery was sealed by a stellar opening lap, where the Swiss driver threw caution to the wind, benefited from mistakes ahead of him, and moved up to 14th by the end of the lap. From there, he was soon up to 12th, and then made his strategy work and braved the late shower on slicks to come home inside the top ten, ahead of Nico Rosberg's Mercedes and - crucially for his hopes of a 2012 drive - his team mate, who had started well ahead of him in 16th.

Moment of the Race

Lap 52 - There were two truly epic scraps for the lead in the Hungarian GP, more than some F1 races get in a lifetime. But while the brief early Vettel/Hamilton ding-dong was the more hard-fought, it was the Button/Hamilton one as the drizzle arrived that really decided the destiny of the race. And it was made all the more thrilling by the fact that this was a scrap between team mates, and team mates with a history of colliding with each other as recently as late June. While McLaren's slightly nauseating post-race comments about how the fight showed how they won't "compromise their values" in the wake of the 'RBR in using team orders sort of shock' wasn't especially palatable, there's no doubt that the 'let 'em race' strategy is infinitely more exciting than the 'Mark, maintain the gap' one.

Quote of the Race

"We need a little rain shower now, that would spice this up a treat." - Foresight's Martin Brundle made the plea on lap 42 on the BBC, and just a handful of laps later, his wish came true.

Patronise F1's Hungarian GP Coverage

Race Preview - Hungarian Grand Prix

Minute-by-minute reports:
Free Practice 1
Free Practice 2
Free Practice 3
Hungarian GP Qualifying
Hungarian GP Race

Session reports:
FP1 - Hamilton tops FP1 as Web bites the wall
FP2 - Hamilton stays ahead in FP2 in Hungary
FP3 - Vettel hits back in final Hungary practice
Qualifying - Vettel takes dramatic pole from Hamilton
Race - Brilliant Button secures Hungarian glory

Post-race coverage:
Five talking points from the Hungarian GP
Fifth Column - Hungary

The Results

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