Räikkönen and Kallio return to winning ways

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Kimi Räikkönen celebrated his first wedding anniversary in fine style at the Hungaroring on Sunday, bringing his McLaren-Mercedes home to win the Hungarian GP and reduce the gap at the top of the Formula One Drivers' Championship to a slightly less daunting 26 points.
      Räikkönen's delight and relief at lasting the course after a series of frustrating retirements will have been compounded by the fact that runaway leader Fernando Alonso (Renault) failed to collect any points at all, after a first-lap shunt forced him into an unscheduled additional pit stop.
      In the end, the fastest car on the track also proved to be reliable enough to complete the required 70 laps, and Räikkönen won by a comfortable margin from Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) and his younger brother Ralf Schumacher (Toyota).
     
The key moment was when Räikkönen emerged ahead of Schumacher after the pair had made the second of their three pit-stops.
      The Hungaroring track is notoriously difficult for overtaking, and once he was past the Ferrari, the Finn opened up a comfortable lead that he held until the chequered flag.
     
With Alonso reduced to the role of a frustrated spectator, the only real threat to Räikkönen's fourth GP win of the season came from his McLaren-Mercedes team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya.
      Montoya, who had chosen a two-stop strategy, looked certain to take top honours until his car slowed to a halt on Lap 40 with a drive shaft problem. The McLaren team's weekend was thus only partially successful: the one-two victory that looked to be inevitable would have brought them within a few points of the Renaults in the manufacturers' points table.
      Räikkönen and his team boss Ron Dennis were also unusually subdued on the winners' podium, and the champagne remained unsprayed: a member of the McLaren crew had fallen to his death from a hotel balcony earlier in the week.
     
Mika Kallio takes second GP win in Germany
     
     
Mika Kallio was fastest home in the 125 cc road racing event at Sachsenring on Sunday. The Red Bull KTM rider started from pole, but rapidly found himself down in sixth place, and had to claw himself back into contention.
      He hit the front again after seven laps and then led a tight group of six riders for several laps. With six of the scheduled 27 laps still to be ridden, Manuel Poggiali crashed in dramatic fashion, with his bike left in the middle of the track, and the race organisers decided to interrupt the race - red flags were put out. Since 75% of the race distance had already been covered, the results for the last completed lap stood as the final classification.
      The runner-up spot went to Thomas Lüthi of Switzerland (Honda). Lüthi took over the leadership of the riders' table, with a three point gap on Kallio. The race for the 125 cc title is a good deal tighter than on the Formula One front: the top five riders are within 20 points of each other, with seven races to go.
      Another interesting point that will probably not have gone unnoticed by the Formula One authorities is that the weekend's bike racing was watched by more than 200,000 spectators.


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