Qualifying - Hungarian GP report: Renault F1

Renault Sport Formula One Team drivers Kevin Magnussen and Jolyon Palmer experienced a delayed, rain-affected, red flag abundant and ultimately frustrating qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Q1 was initially delayed by twenty minutes following a heavy downpour, then continued to be interrupted by further rain and red flags. After the longest Q1 session in recent memory, and belying their FP3 speed, Jolyon was the seventeenth fastest and Kevin the nineteenth.

Kevin Magnussen

“It was disappointing not getting more out of today as we are looking a little bit stronger this weekend. It was so difficult to see out there because there was so much spray and we weren’t able to be at the front of the queue. It is still a positive weekend in terms of the progress we’ve made and how strong we looked this morning. Tomorrow we have the race and for sure we’ll be aiming to make the very most of it.”

Jolyon Palmer

“P10 was great; unfortunately that came in FP3 not qualifying! Today has actually been really good with the tenth fastest time this morning in a normal dry session which was a real boost. In the wet, we were at least as good, however unfortunately we weren’t on track at the right time in Q1. I set one lap at the beginning of the session and didn’t have a chance to set another as the red flags came out at the wrong times for us. Slowly but surely our rivals had the luck to get the laps they needed, but the red flags meant I was never able to improve. Whatever the weather tomorrow, I think we will be moving forward which is what we want. It could be a great race.”

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director

How was qualifying for the team?

We had great potential and the pace of the car looks good as we saw in FP3 this morning. Unfortunately we saw a very unusual Q1 which was delayed and then interrupted numerous times by red flags so it took 74 instead of the usual 18 minutes. The red flags came exactly when we didn’t want them and this really hurt our session.

What are the considerations for tomorrow’s race?

We are looking at every means to move our cars forwards. We know we’ve shown better pace here than we’ve seen recently but we also know that the Hungaroring is not an easy circuit to overtake on. We’ll be watching the weather closely too as today’s downpours were not as expected at all.