Mercedes need fast start, Ferrari enjoy spicy pizza

BUDAPEST: For the second race in a row it all went wrong at the start for Mercedes in Hungary and a rule change coming in after the August break will give the Formula One world champions even more to think about.

“We just had another crappy start, which was the root cause of all the other stuff that came afterwards,” Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff said in a frank assessment of Sunday’s debacle.

Mercedes have started all 10 races this season on pole position, and have won eight of them, but for the first time this year they had no drivers on the podium.

The Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen scythed past Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg when the start lights went out, just as Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas had at Silverstone for Williams.

Mercedes were left on the back foot in Hungary, triggering a chain reaction that left world champion Hamilton – who also had a poor start in Austria – finishing sixth and Rosberg eighth while Vettel went on to win.

“We need to get on top of the situation.

“It is not acceptable and it needs to be analysed why it happened,” said Wolff. “It is many various reasons, not one particular one.”

The next race is Belgium and, to complicate matters, there will be restrictions on the amount of information teams can give drivers at the start and that could shake things up.

Ferrari technical head James Allison agreed that the opening seconds had been crucial on Sunday.

“If you get away well at the start and are in free air, and you can have your race without compromise, it makes a lot of difference,” he said.

It certainly did for Hamilton, who could only laugh ulti- mately at the string of blunders he made.

The Briton banged wheels with Rosberg, bumped across the gravel, collided with Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo and collected a drive-through penalty.

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but hot and spicy is tastier for Ferrari Formula One team principal Maurizio Arrivabene.

Sebastian Vettel’s stirring victory in Hungary, the land of paprika, on Sunday gave Arrivabene the chance he had been waiting for.

Mercedes non-executive chairman Niki Lauda had stirred things up when he blamed Ferrari rather than his team’s dominance for making the sport seem boring.

“How is it Mercedes’ fault if Ferrari mucks about with spaghetti rather than improve their car on the track?” the Austrian, a former Ferrari world champion, had said.

Ferrari were not going to let a barb like that slip by unpunished and Arrivabene tucked in with glee on Sunday afternoon.

“It’s the second victory after 10 races and eight podiums and I dedicate it to those who don’t know how to add up, who say stupid things,” he told reporters.

“I don’t like spaghetti, I had a spicy pizza made and told the team to fill up.” – Reuters