After a strong showing all weekend in Budapest, Toyota was the highest-scoring team in the race and consolidated its strong fourth place in the championship standings.

Schumacher, who qualified 5th, and Trulli, who started 3rd, both ran three-stop strategies. Jarno pitted for the first time on lap 13, followed a lap later by Ralf, who moved past his team mate through running the extra light-fuel lap.

Trulli made his remaining stops on laps 33 and 52, while Ralf came in again on laps 35 and 54. The 30-year-old German drove hard all race and finished right on the tail of his brother’s Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro car, the two split by just 0.5s as they charged across the finishing line.

“The team did a great job this weekend,” Ralf said. “I have to admit that I was not 100% convinced about the three-stop strategy but the team was right. It’s a difficult task here, a fine balance between looking after the tyres and being able to run at a competitive pace. Also, we weren’t expecting such high temperatures but everything worked out well. People have been saying that we are capable of qualifying well but not running such a strong race pace. Well, today we proved that we were able to go as quickly as everybody else apart from McLaren, who are in a different league.

“I caught Michael quite quickly towards the end but he had very strong exit speed out of the last corner and so it was impossible to pass him at the end of the straight. I was hoping for a mistake but it never came.”

Trulli, meanwhile, felt that his race was compromised by an incident at the first corner, where his TF105 was hit by Rubens Barrichello’s Ferrari.
“That was a very difficult afternoon,” Jarno said. “My car was hit hard from behind in Turn 1 and after that it was quite difficult to drive and I was never very happy with the balance. The handling characteristics were changing between understeer and oversteer and it was quite hard to understand what was happening. I kept asking to change the balance over the radio and to come out of the race with five points was a good result. Overall it was a strong weekend from the whole team and we were highly competitive.”

The race was won by Kimi Raikkonen’s West McLaren Mercedes, the Finn closing the drivers’ championship gap to Fernando Alonso to 26 points after the Spaniard failed to score points following a first lap incident. Behind the Schumacher brothers, Trulli’s fourth place was his seventh points finish of the season. Jenson Button finished fifth for Lucky Strike BAR Honda, ahead of the BMW Williams F1 Team pairing of Nick Heidfeld and Mark Webber. The final point went to Takuma Sato’s BAR Honda, the Japanese driver’s first score of the season.

Panasonic Toyota Racing’s chief race engineer Dieter Gass said: “Ralf drove an excellent race and showed very strong pace towards the end. The only problem is that Hungaroring is one of the most difficult places at which to overtake, which I think everyone appreciates, and really we achieved the maximum possible. Jarno coped with some balance issues that made things difficult for him after he was hit at the first corner but, overall, it has been an excellent weekend for the team, reflected by coming away with more points than any of our rivals.”

Formula 1 now has a three-week summer break before the inaugural Turkish Grand Prix at Istanbul on August 21, which will be uncharted territory for everyone but, like Hungary, promises some of the highest temperatures anywhere on the calendar, which should play to Toyota’s strengths.