Team reaction after day one in Hungaroring (part 2)

Sauber Ferrari

In the first free practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi were both quite happy with the balance of their cars. In the afternoon the team tried several set-up changes without making any immediate progress. Now it is time to analyse the data. The race on Sunday at the Hungaroring will be the 300th Grand Prix entered by Peter Sauber’s team.

Pedro de la Rosa: “For me it was a positive and productive day. My car is pretty good on this low speed circuit, which means all the improvements the team introduced during the recent races are also paying off on this type of track. I think we are looking strong here and there is more to come: For the time being my car tends to understeer, the front is a bit lazy, but I’m sure this can be solved by changing the set-up.”

Kamui Kobayashi: “We have done a lot of set-up work today and my car is getting better, but I am not happy yet. The track is quite bumpy and I have to fight understeer as well as oversteer. But my main problem is a lack of grip. I don’t really know yet where this comes from, but the data will tell us and we are now going to look at it.”

James Key, Technical Director: “It’s been a very busy day. In the morning we tested some aerodynamic parts on both cars, which provided us with very useful data in view of future developments. The morning was okay for both drivers as the cars ran fine. The second session was more of a standard programme, looking at the set-up of the cars and the tyres. The biggest problems today were consistency and traffic. The grip levels were quite tricky and made it difficult to put together a good lap, particularly on the harder tyre, but also with the soft compound it was not easy to produce consistent lap times. That’s definitely something we have to look into this evening. We’ve got work to do tonight, and I don’t think it’s straight forward, but Pedro being 11th on a compromised lap wasn’t so bad. For Kamui we need to work on the rear end of his car to make it more stable. I think it’s still open as to what will happen tomorrow.”

Toro Rosso Ferrari

Jaime Alguersuari: “It was a useful day, as we tested many elements and got a lot of information to analyse. Because we were evaluating some new components today, I expect us to make more progress tomorrow morning in terms of improving the set-up and balance of the car. I did a good long run, which is useful in terms of Sunday’s race. As far as our pace is concerned, at this stage I would say the upgrades we have are an improvement and I hope that translates into a better qualifying performance than usual. Traction and braking seems quite good and the main difficulty I am having is mid-corner as the softer tyres had some graining on the fronts during my long run. We need to think about that in terms of what it means for the race.”

Sebastien Buemi: “We had a busy programme, evaluating various parts on the car and in the second session, I reverted to some of the older components while Jaime stayed on the new one, to get a clearer picture. Now we have to study the data carefully, because at the moment, it is hard to tell what improvement the new parts bring. We had no technical issues, so we ran trouble free in both sessions, which means we have a clear understanding of the tyres. As usual here on the first day, the problem is that you do not get much grip from the tyres because the track surface is dirty, so at first we struggled a bit, although this afternoon on the Option tyre, the grip level clearly improved. But we still need to work on improving the rear end grip for tomorrow.”

Laurent Mekies (Chief Engineer): “We had a few new aero components to evaluate, some of which we had tested before and others that went straight on the car today. It’s good that we got a full day of dry weather, given that there were a few showers in the surrounding area, as it helped our aero evaluation work. Apart from that it was the usual Friday work list: we evaluated the two types of tyre and they both performed very consistently. The rest of the time was spent on set-up work, with the usual trade off of very long runs, which we did with Jaime and single lap performance.”

Force India Mercedes

The Force India F1 Team’s Hungarian Grand Prix preparations got underway today with the opening two free practice sessions at the twisty, undulating Hungaroring on the outskirts of the capital city of Budapest.

With Adrian Sutil giving the team’s new blown diffuser its initial outing, his programme was focussed on gathering as much data as possible. Paul di Resta, replacing Tonio Liuzzi for the first session, completed his first laps of the Hungaroring, with his schedule consisting of circuit familiarisation and the establishment of a good baseline set-up for the weekend. The Scot ran the ’normal’ diffuser, allowing the team to complete back to back evaluation with the blown diffuser.

Tonio was back in his regular chassis for the second of the practice sessions and continued Paul’s programme of set-up and aero work.

Adrian Sutil: Today my main goal was to get as much running as possible with the new blown diffuser. We made very good progress in this regard and didn’t have any real problems with it, which is a major achievement given how big a component it is to introduce. It seemed to work quite well with the various mappings, and also the temperatures look under control so we can be quite confident in it. But in general we didn’t get the best out of the car today. We are struggling a little on the softer tyre and neither Tonio nor myself could improve from the hard tyre. There doesn’t seem to be a peak with it, unlike the hard tyre that you know will peak and come in, but it’s much more difficult to understand where we are with the soft one. We’ll continue to look at it and hope that we can improve tomorrow.

Tonio Liuzzi: As always in Hungary the circuit was quite low grip in the second session, although it looked pretty clean. It was very slippery in places but it should improve for tomorrow as more rubber gets laid down. For now the balance is quite good, particularly on the hard tyre, but we need to understand why we didn’t improve on the soft compound. It’s going to be a tough weekend for us, but we’ve done some productive running today and will look at everything overnight to try and find some more time tomorrow.

Paul di Resta (test and reserve driver): Today was my first outing at the Hungaroring so I necessarily spent a fair bit of time learning the track. It’s quite a complicated one to get to grips with and get into a good rhythm, with a lot of corners that flow into each other with no real rest. The average speed is quite slow as well so you’re not getting the full effect of the cars as you would at a track like Silverstone. All the same, I really enjoyed being out there. The track was low grip to start with but the grip level slowly improved and we were able to run through all the programme. I wasn’t running the blown diffuser so it is difficult to compare directly how I did relative to Adrian, but I am pretty happy with how it went today.

Dominic Harlow, chief race engineer: An interesting day here in Hungary as we learned a great deal about our exhaust blown diffuser with Adrian whilst Tonio concentrated on the tyre evaluations. Initial indications are positive. The circuit was in quite good shape at the start of the day and, as the temperatures increased the grip became a bit harder to find. We can improve the balance a bit more for tomorrow, and things are very tight in our area of the field so it’s really a question of examining the data and going forward from there.

Lotus Cosworth

The Hungarian Grand Prix Friday Practice sessions saw Lotus Racing finish the day just under one second ahead of their nearest rival and complete a total of 88 laps, despite a hydraulics problem on Heikki’s car which curtailed his running in the afternoon session.

Jarno Trulli: “It was a good, trouble free Friday session, so I’m very happy with how it went. We did a lot of work on the setup so generally the car balance hasn’t been too bad. Obviously it’s a bumpy circuit which evolves all the time, so it’s important to follow up the evolution. We’ve also been able to evaluate the tyres, which is important for both qualifying tomorrow and for the race on Sunday.”

Heikki Kovalainen: “The track is good and there’s a great atmosphere out there. This morning we were able to complete the programme without any problems, but when I went out this afternoon we almost immediately had a mechanical issue that unfortunately the boys couldn’t fix, so we lost the afternoon session. That’s the way it goes sometimes, but I’m sure that we’ll be ok tomorrow. It’s still too early to say how well suited the car is to the track, I’d have obviously had a better idea if I’d been able to run this afternoon, but this morning was pretty encouraging, and it’s really not too bad at all when we look at our direct competitors.”

Jody Egginton, Chief Engineer: “Mixed fortunes today – with Jarno we completed today’s tasks and put a lot of mileage on the option tyre, so we’ve got a lot of good data from that. Heikki was very unlucky to have a car problem which prevented him from putting in any decent time this afternoon – we tried to resolve it but the time beat us. Despite that we got a lot of valuable information from them both this morning, and more from Jarno this afternoon, so I think we’ll be in pretty good shape tomorrow.”

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer: “A reasonable day although we had a hydraulic issue on Heikki’s car which unfortunately limited his running in the second session. With Jarno we were able to complete the full programme, and the cars look like they are where we expect them to be and we have to make sure we have a reliable Saturday and Sunday.”

Virgin Racing Cosworth

Despite predictions of rain, the Hungaroring stayed dry and mainly sunny for today’s practice sessions for the Hungarian Grand Prix. In the first session both Timo and Lucas worked through their evaluation programmes on the medium Prime tyre, working through a range of settings to establish a good mechanical balance.

In the second session, both cars continued the programme, running faultlessly throughout, although Lucas did have a minor off at turn three and came in for an inspection. There was no serious damage though, and both he and Timo managed to run using the super-soft Option tyre, gaining plenty of valuable set-up information. Timo achieved a total of 35 laps in the session, and Lucas was close behind on 32. The pair were classified 20th and 21st respectively.

Timo Glock: “A normal Friday for us without any problems with the car, so it has been quite an easy day for us. We did a lot of set-up work, In terms of our speed we are not where we want to be just yet, but we have a good baseline with which to start the weekend.”

Lucas di Grassi: “We have had a good Friday without any reliability problems so the weekend has started smoothly. We did all the work we needed to do and I am looking forward to improving the car even more tomorrow and continuing the progress. I hope the weather stays stable so we can have a good qualifying session.”

Nick Wirth, Technical Director: “A smooth day of information gathering for us. Both cars ran reliably, as we hoped, and we ran through a range of set-ups which we’re deep into analysing at the moment. We’re certainly not there yet on the set-up and both drivers had their best laps compromised heavily, so let’s hope we make our usual solid set-up progress overnight and have a smooth Saturday.”

HRT F1 Cosworth

The first practice day got underway at the Hungaroring today. Under dry and sunny conditions, the drivers of Hispania Racing, HRT F1 Team Bruno Senna and Sakon Yamamoto were in action and covered 58 laps between them in the morning and 65 more in the afternoon. In the first session, the Brazilian driver ended up 23rd with a best lap time of 1.26.990 and the Japanese driver finished 24th (1.28.157). The track conditions improved in the second practice and consequently, both drivers were able to improve the times they had clocked in the morning. Bruno Senna ended up 22nd (1.26.745) and Sakon Yamamoto 23rd (1.26.798).

Dr Colin Kolles, Team Principal: “At the beginning of the first practice session, the grip level was expectably low. With one car, we did almost half a race distance this morning. Sakon did a very good job today and he was close to Bruno. We will be more competitive in qualifying and the race.”

Sakon Yamamoto: “We had some problems on the car this morning, so we couldn’t go through the whole program. In the second practice session, we could fulfill the program and we got a lot of good data. We keep on working hard and getting ready for tomorrow.”

Bruno Senna: “In the first session, the track was very ‘green’ and the grip level was quite low. We tried some aero settings in preparation for the qualifying and the race. We could fulfill our testing program and, as we completed almost a whole race distance, you can see that the car is reliable.”