Saturday August 23rd, 2003
Moustached Man
Fernando Alonso was the subject of a team prank on Friday after a little extra artwork on the garage displays drew a chuckle from the media centre during qualifying. The handy men at Renault had climbed up to deface the young Spaniard's photograph above his garage and, when the cameras focussed on it as he headed out for his single-lap run they clearly displayed a moustached Mexican rather than the fresh faced Spaniard. It did little to crack the whip, however, because Alonso finished six tenths of a second behind his pacesetting teammate Jarno Trulli (no moustache) in sixth place.
Horsing Around
Sauber teammates Nick Heidfeld and Heinz-Harald Frentzen took a bizarre trip to a Hungarian horse park on Thursday morning to watch a show and join in "funny games" like Knocking down the bottle with a whip and dressing up like Hungarian rangemen to drive an oxen carriage before eating a Hungarian lunch to complete the outing. The Lazar Equestrian Park was founded in 2000 by the eight-time world champions in four-hand driving, Vilmos and Zoltan Lazar and Heidfeld said: "It's a very nice facility and the show was exciting, particularly when they drove the 'Hungarian Post' with eight horses. The drifting was also incredibly impressive. When the rangeman was riding the horses standing on the back of one of them I was sure he would fall off and was surprised how he managed to stay on even though the horses were running so fast."
Frentzen, however, admitted his wife Tanja and daughter Lea would have enjoyed the show, perhaps a little more than him, but he added: "It was a nice chance to meet people from this area and to get to know a little bit about the country. Usually when we go to Grands Prix we don't see much of the country and the people there."
Cutting Close
The FIA were close to concern on Thursday lunchtime when the press conference questioner failed to turn up at the circuit. With a crucial conference involving the three culprits in the German Grand Prix startline collision, Rubens Barrichello, Ralf Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen, looming the closed-door discussions over what not to ask were crucial and the questioner was nowhere to be seen. He arrived in the nick of time, however, after an impromptu trip with a fellow journalist around the apparent red light district of Budapest as their journey from the airport went almost disastrously off the map.
Anonymous Mr B.
As if Renault's Alonso prank was not enough entertainment for the mechanics in the pitlane as they returned in holiday mood, the BAR-Honda boys were at it with Jenson Button. The young Englishman is currently going through the experience of watching his girlfriend Louise Griffiths on BBC's Fame Academy television talent show and when he went to the first sing-off he was forced to hide his fame by wearing a badge saying 'Loiuse's Boyfriend'. When he walked into the team's garage at the Hungaroring he soon saw his mechanics had taken things a little further as he found his name on the cockpit of the BAR-Honda had been replaced with the same description he wore on his badge.
Published at 09:29:59 GMT
(03-11-2005): 
