Hungary: 4th straight points haul

By Karl King
July 27 2005

Beautiful as it is, Budapest isn't best known for providing a track with great opportunity for overtaking so it is vital for Ralf Schumacher to get a good grid position. He will be helped tremendously by going out 6th from last in Saturday's qualifying session.

Hungary holds an excellent reliability record for Ralf, finishing every race he has started here.

After a poor start to the year, the German is starting to come good, and is eyeing his 4th straight points finish in succession.

"Budapest in July is one of the hottest venues that we go to during the year, so we can expect another sweltering weekend," Ralf predicted. "The circuit is not used much outside of the grand prix, so it is extremely dusty on the opening day of practice. The Hungaroring is famous for being one of the hardest circuits for overtaking on the entire calendar, so grid position is particularly important and going out late in the session is an advantage. If you are stuck for long periods in another car's slipstream your car's system temperatures can go up, so we sometimes have to back off during the race to let cooler air run through the car. But a couple of years ago they extended the straight so nothing is impossible. Hopefully we can extend our run of three straight finishes in the points."   YEAR QUALI RACE REASONS 2004 DNQ DNS Injured after Indy 2003 2 4 - 2002 3 3 - 2001 4 4 - 2000 4 5 - 1999 16 9 - 1998 10 9 - 1997 14 5 -