OpinionLewis Hamilton may be the dark horse in F1 championship race
Vettel may be leading at halfway stage, but watch out for the Briton
Finally, the second half of the Formula One season is about to get underway. Like boxers who have been trading jabs and biding their time, now is the moment to start the serious knockout blows.
First things first: the drivers' championship. Vettel may be 38 points ahead of his nearest rival, but he is by no means home and dry. Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso are nearest to him in the standings, but it is the man who lies fourth who may yet provide the stiffest challenge.
It's not all been plain sailing for Lewis Hamilton since he arrived at Mercedes at the start of the season. Up until the last grand prix, he had managed just three podiums, and they were third places.
And yet things seemed to click at the Hungaroring. Pole position was followed by a win, and a dominant one at that. All of a sudden Mercedes and Hamilton's prospects have been transformed.
The car has always been fast, but it has chewed its tyres. The team felt that despite a typically fast qualifying display, the Briton would go backwards in the race as it progressed. That never happened, and Hamilton took the chequered flag for a win he described as one of "the most important of my career".
It might also be that Hamilton is in a better place mentally to challenge for a second world title. It could seem an odd thing to say, given that he's not long split up with his pop star girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, prompting him to concede that: "My mind has been in a lot of different places ... when I've not been on my laptop with my engineers or in the car, my mind has just been in the clouds."