It almost seems like a cliché to say this, but these conditions which call for calm heads and assertive but not rash decisions are tailor-made for Button. His fairly early change from inters was what helped him get in front of Sebastian Vettel, and even without Lewis Hamilton’s drive-through and wrong switch back to intermediates, Jenson would probably have won because he was already on the primes whereas Hamilton always had an extra stop to make. But this race showed his class as a tactician and in close combat.

How he must rue the poor weekend in Valencia and the double-DNFs in Britain and Germany. With this win he has climbed back into the battle for 2nd overall, at a time when McLaren is on the up. In 2009 McLaren missed a trick with their design. In 2010 they started strong but faded. In 2011 they originally missed a trick again, corrected it as the season started, faded once more, but have bounced back to keep Red Bull well and truly on the hop.

Button has arguably been the boldest in terms of strategy amongst the frontrunners, more willing to play the patient long game, but his problem is not only that he’s coming from behind, but he lacks a tenth or two of ultimate pace in the dry, and both McLaren drivers plus Mark Webber and Fernando Alonso, four of last year’s five protagonists, are taking points off each other as they continue the slugfest this year, which will more than likely assure Vettel of his second championship.

Hamilton’s season have been dogged by far too much hot-headed decision-making, and Hungary also fell into that category. He had done so well to be in a position to control the race. Ultimately it wasn’t just the gamble with the inters, it was the spin turn in front of Paul di Resta, but before then it was also the change to another set of options when Webber had already set the tone by putting on primes. On a track as difficult to pass as the Hungaroring, why not do the same and try to hold track position to the end?

Vettel spent the first half of the year unchallenged, which conversely means that now as he is being caught on the track, he can afford to settle for points. Which is annoying because it means we still don’t know how he’d cope in a tight on-track battle that matters. Here he lost out twice on the circuit to the McLarens, one through his own error under Hamilton’s pressure, but he did also pass Alonso on track although the Spaniard was out of sequence.

But what is undeniable is that the big advantage in qualifying that Red Bull had has become a little advantage, and the little advantage in race trim has become no advantage at all. Which is bad news for Webber, whose trademark problems this year - technical issues, dreadful starts, and average tactics - all turned up again and show no sign of abating in the races to come. He had done so well to climb back to 4th, his decision to go for inters during the brief shower cost him a podium.

Given McLaren’s current form, I’d be surprised if Webber can hold onto 2nd, but I’m also not sure that Alonso and Ferrari can claim 2nd either. Their season has fluctuated between being thereabouts or slight off (unlike last season’s more constant upward trajectory) and Hungary was a case or the latter. Fernando was even out-qualified by Felipe Massa and gained a podium by default, although his post-race comments were a fine example of publicocrap trying to put a positive spin on a rather average race.

Massa had not only out-qualified his team-mate for the first time this season, but he had engaged in a nice ding-dong with Alonso before his spin which ruined his race. But with it looking as though there is no option but Ferrari re-signing him for 2012, he is regaining speed and confidence to a point where podiums in the remaining eight races are possible, and even his first win in 3 years can’t be entirely ruled out in the right conditions. He’ll be a thorn in the battle for 2nd in the points.

Renault’s backslide means Mercedes are firming in 4th in the constructors points, but that’s as high as they’ll go. What else can you expect when the W02 is not fast enough over one lap, is not showing any sign of meaningful development (just like last year, and Brawn in 2009), and has one driver in Michael Schumacher who, thwarted by age and no testing, is only at 80% of what he used to be. Then also throw in unreliability, which ended Schumi’s race early on.

Then add an inherent lack of race pace and a constant issue with wearing out tyres, and some odd strategy too - which ought to be Ross Brawn’s forte. Not for the first time this year, promise in the early laps came to naught. In Nico Rosberg’s case, before he joined the intermediates party late on, he had dropped off the top five because he had run primes mid-race. In Hungary, surely the better plan was to use the options to gain track position before switching to primes as early as you dare to protect that position.

And so 7th fell to Di Resta who emerged in front of what was a titanic struggle with Sebastien Buemi in the last third of the race. Unlike much of the season so far, when the Scottish rookie has been unable to convert potential into results, here he kept it clean on Sunday and reaped the rewards. This was a welcome comeback after Adrian Sutil had stolen a march in the intra-team Force India battle in recent rounds and after the German had also starred in qualifying in Budapest.

But Vijay Mallya and co must be tearing their hair out at how neither driver can regularly string a whole weekend together, making this a season of missed opportunities so far. Sutil undid all his qualifying heroics on the first lap, and compounded things with a switch to inters. He spent all but one of the last 42 laps in 14th place, which emphasised how difficult it is to make ground and pass at the Hungaroring, and also how costly his first lap spin was.

Toro Rosso may be unfashionable in terms of qualifying speed, but they have just kept cropping up in the points, and a double score here boosted their tally to 22 in what is shaping up as a three-way stoush for 6th place with Sauber and Force India. Buemi made up for his five place grid penalty by leaping up from 23rd to 14th on the first lap, then to 12th by lap 3. But both he and Jaime Alguersuari lost out by waiting too long to change onto slicks.

Not panicking, the team gave Alguersuari an undercut ahead of his team-mate at the second stop, and the Spaniard would probably have maintained his place after the third stop but for going off which put him back behind Buemi. He finished 10th after clashing with Kamui Kobayashi whereas Buemi was now free to tussle with Di Resta for 7th. But the current form of both drivers, especially in race trim, mean both are safe for the rest of the year and you’d have to say that neither deserve the boot for 2012.

Renault give the impression of rapidly losing interest in everything except working out if and when Robert Kubica will be back. Their front exhaust has not given the expected benefits and is on the wrong side of where the regulations are headed. Nick Heidfeld has not shown much leadership, and to spend the opening laps battling the newer teams and the whole race (before his spectacular exit) behind Heikki Kovalainen was embarrassing. There’s no obvious case for Renault keeping him until the end of the year.

Vitaly Petrov is only two points behind Heidfeld, but he continues to be solid although he’s reached a ceiling for this year where he can’t drag more out of himself or the car. He essentially ran the whole race just out of the points, but his strategy mirrored Rosberg’s - running primes mid-race and being amongst those who gambled incorrectly for inters - and whilst the Russian believes this had the potential to score points, I beg to differ, especially given the more orthodox strategies chosen by Di Resta and Toro Rosso.

When it comes to out-there strategies though, no-one does it better than Sauber but as strategy choices become more standard as the season wears on, the Swiss team has to be careful not to be too clever for their own good because they are starting to lose their points-scoring regularity. Having survived a first slick stint on the primes without being disadvantaged, what was Kobayashi’s 28-lap stint on options from laps 34 to 62 all about? There was no way he was going to make it to the end without being swamped.

Like Di Resta, Sergio Perez has had trouble capitalising on opportunities, but after qualifying well to get into Q3, he proceeded to have so much trouble in the early going that he struggled to overcome the newer teams and in the end the only headway he made into the midfield was to pass Pastor Maldonado’s Williams when the Venezuelan joined those making the ill-advised switch to intermediates with 20 laps to go, and also after both Perez and Maldonado had received drive-through penalties.

Both were for rudimentary errors; Perez passed Kovalainen under yellows and Maldonado failed to engage the pit lane speed limiter. In the other Williams, Rubens Barrichello says he could have scored points but for also switching to inters, which is true because he, like Webber, was already onto his set of primes and perhaps 10th place ahead of Alguersuari was possible. But Williams are directionless with their car this year, and with an 18-point gap to Toro Rosso ahead, it will be hard to improve on 9th place.

All in all, you’d have to say that Lotus have been quite frustrating this season. Their one-lap pace has not been as good as hoped, but then Kovalainen does something stupendous in the race like run in the midfield past one-third distance, before keeping pace with the likes of Maldonado and Perez. Then both cars retire with the same mechanical issue, and a water leak at that, as the team’s unreliability continues to hurt them and place them at risk against their rivals.

Jarno Trulli arrived in Hungary a changed man, not because of the weird experiment with Karun Chandhok in Germany, but because of the new power steering system. I’m sure there’s an explanation but how can a man of his experience be so much at the mercy of a hydraulic system? Would the front-running Jarno of six or seven years ago have been so affected? His post-race rant at the stewards for not penalising Perez for cutting a chicane also reeked of grumpy old man syndrome.

Timo Glock also had his moments mixing it in the midfield in the early laps, proving that a wet track still can be an equaliser of machinery, before resuming his customary position behind Lotus but ahead of the other Virgin and the HRTs. But the attention at Virgin was more on Jerome D’Ambrosio, and mainly for the wrong reasons. Things started off badly for Jerome when he was out-qualified by both Hispanias, such that he started last even behind the demoted Buemi.

Then in the race itself, having got in front of the Spanish cars, he was overhauled by Daniel Ricciardo before also falling for the brief shower and switching to inters, compounding that error by spinning in the pit lane. Thankfully no one was hurt but it was both amusing and extraordinarily dangerous all at the same time. In truth it was no laughing matter, but it was also enough to earn the Belgian rookie his first "Reject of the Race" award.

Although Ricciardo was just out-qualified by Vitantonio Liuzzi again, the Aussie had the better of the race, but it was not entirely a fair contest as the Italian had been hit from behind on the first lap and struggled for balance for the rest of the race as well as stop for inters. Nonetheless it was important for Daniel to finish ahead of his team-mate after a solid run, which marked yet another improved result on his first two efforts. That’s the trend which we would like to see continue in the remaining races.