Waiting for a Spa treatment

After the Hungarian Grand Prix, all Formula 1 teams take a compulsory break and reconvene for Friday Practice at the Belgian Grand Prix on 26th of August. This break, although required by the teams to recharge 'their batteries' (not KERS though - that's not allowed!), leaves F1 fans devoid of any entertainment. 

So we fanatics come up with different ways to pass the time: from blog swap shops, Twitter Chats ..... or even going on holiday to distract ourselves from not watching F1! I've decided to host a Twitter quiz an hour before the famous #F1Chat hosted by Formula 1 Blog every Monday at 4pm Eastern US, 9pm UK.

Hope you can join us for this quiz on Monday 8th August. It'll be fairly easy to follow and answer so whether you're a veteran or novice F1 fan, I'm sure you can answer most of the questions - even without a search-engine!  

Hungarian GP: Race Summary

Hungarian Grand Prix 2011 marked Jenson Button's 200th Formula 1 race. He had a small party with several drivers and former team bosses to mark the occasion but quickly had to pack the cake away for the real work on Sunday.

Button's 200th Grand Prix (Photo by @theFifthDriver)

A wet track meant all drivers started on Intermediate tyres. Vettel had a decent start but both McLaren drivers (who started in 2nd and 3rd) were not far behind him. The tricky conditions meant a lot of sliding, fair battles between both McLaren drivers and an error from Vettel saw Hamilton take the lead in the 5th lap of the 70-lap race.

A dry line soon appeared on the track and most drivers switched to Super-Soft tyres (option tyres). Hamilton pulled out a lead, but it soon started raining again and some drivers made the controversial move onto Intermediates while others swapped to Soft (Prime) tyres. It turned out to be the wrong strategy as drivers like Hamilton and Webber couldn't make the tyres 'work for them'.

Hungarian GP: Qualifying

Friday practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix track was in cooler-than-normal temperatures. So perhaps that explained why Friday's practice sessions (FP1 & FP2) had been dominated by Hamilton - whose McLaren favours cooler temperatures. However by the Qualifying session on Saturday, it was warmer albeit windy.

First Qualifying session Q1 saw Buemi, Kovalainen, Trulli, Glock, Liuzzi, Ricciardo, D'Ambrosio drop out. Unfortunately, Buemi carries over a 5-place grid penalty from the German Grand Prix and so will start the race in 23th place.

In Q2, McLaren's Hamilton set a time 0.843seconds off the super-softs' time of Ferrari's Alonso, on the harder compound tyres. Positions 11th - 17th were filled by Di Resta, Petrov, Kobayashi, Heidfeld, Barrichello, Alguersuari, Maldonado - leaving Alonso, Button, Webber, Vettel, Massa, Hamilton, Rosberg, Schumacher, Sutil and Perez to fight for the Top 10 positions.

Perez makes it into Q3

By Q3, track temperature dropped slightly and Lewis went out to set a lap on his first set of super-soft tyres. Hamilton was on provisional pole position after the first runs but Vettel set a time of 1min19:815 and 'found' 0.163seconds to qualify ahead of Hamilton. 

Top 10 are Vettel, Hamilton, Button, Massa, Alonso, Webber, Rosberg, Sutil, Schumacher, Perez (who didn't set a lap in Q3).