Fahrerstimmen – Tag 1

“I was pretty happy in the afternoon” Seb said “more than in the morning session, as I think the car is performing well also over one lap. We can still improve, but this has been one of the best Fridays so far, technically speaking. Having a great amount of work ahead of us is probably the best thing for keeping our mind busy and getting through the weekend. It’s not easy, but I focused on the job to do. On this track, the qualifying session and the start are very important and can make the difference because overtaking is very difficult. Getting ahead after the first couple of corners is crucial, but there’s a lot of work to do before getting to that point”.

“To set a good lap time around this circuit you need a good balance, I felt we have that. The car was good but unfortunately we still lose a bit of time on the straights. I am not sure if the strengths in cornering will be enough to compensate for this, so we shall have to wait and see. I think we can still improve the setup of the car a little bit more and be quicker than our best lap today, if that will be enough for pole position I’m not sure. We are strong in sector 2 as you would expect as it is very tight and twisty. Qualifying will be important as it’s hard to overtake here so getting ahead early is vital. Another factor is tyre management and strategy, this will be important come the race so we will look into the data tonight in order to get an understanding before Sunday. Mercedes seemed to struggle on the Ultras a bit but I’m expecting them to get it together tomorrow as they usually do. It is also uncertain how much they gain with their power mode. In the long runs they already looked quite competitive.”

“Today was a good day. I think this morning we started well and this afternoon we were also strong, and I think we have a good enough car to be on the front row. Over one lap I think we could still make some improvements, but the long run pace looks good and we’re all very close. I predicted that the top six would be tight this weekend, I think come tomorrow this will still be the case. I feel I can still improve my lap time, but so far it was a good start. I think both of the tyres (Ultrasoft and Soft) performed quite well today and even in the long runs they were holding up alright. I would probably say that the Ultras are my preference for tomorrow, but we’ll make a plan tonight and then we’ll see. Front row would be perfect, second alright, we just don’t want to be third row as it’s difficult to overtake here.”

“It was a very normal Friday”, Kimi commented “trying things and learning as much as possible. The conditions were not very easy in many ways, but it’s normal on a Friday. We don’t really pay too much attention to the lap times, they really don’t count in a practice session. For sure we still have some work to do, but it was not too bad and the car worked as we expected. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have the speed we need”.

Heute war ein relativ normaler Tag. Ferrari und Red Bull waren wie erwartet recht schnell und hatten eine etwas bessere Pace als wir. Auf uns wartet heute Abend also noch Arbeit. Dies ist eine schwierige Strecke und die Reifen überhitzen. Deshalb ist es am wichtigsten, auf die Hinterreifen Acht zu geben. Die heutigen Temperaturen und der Streckenverlauf, bei dem eine Kurve die nächste jagt, machten den Reifen das Leben schwer, da es keine Zeit gibt, um sie abzukühlen. Wir werden uns jetzt besprechen und darüber entscheiden, welche Veränderungen wir bis morgen vornehmen. Ich hoffe, dass wir heute Abend etwas finden und es morgen trocken bleibt, damit wir die Änderungen testen können.

Heute war kein einfacher Tag. Das Auto war schwierig zu fahren und ich hatte Schwierigkeiten, eine Runde zusammenzubekommen, besonders im ersten Training. Für das zweite Training konnten wir das Setup verbessern, aber es gibt noch immer viel zu tun. Diese Strecke ist schwierig; man braucht ein gut ausbalanciertes Auto, um alle Kurven richtig hinzubekommen und wir müssen noch mehr Stabilität finden. Morgen soll sich die Windrichtung verändern, also müssen wir das auch miteinbeziehen. Wir hatten damit zu kämpfen, die UltraSoft-Reifen konstant zum Arbeiten zu bekommen und es gab auch ein paar Überhitzungsprobleme. Das Überholen ist hier schwierig, weshalb die Platzierung im Rennen sehr wichtig ist. Je weniger Stopps man absolviert, desto besser ist es. Red Bull und Ferrari sind wie erwartet schnell und ich glaube, dass es sehr eng zugehen wird.

“We did most of our program today. This morning we had a problem with the car and we lost some time in the run, but after that we got the best information we could from the other car and it’s been a good afternoon. The gap with P8 on new tires was pretty good to see and in race pace we can still improve a little bit, so that’s what we’re going to be looking at to get good on Sunday. Our aim is to do as well as we can from now on and look to the future, not the past. We’ve got 10 more races, so we’ll try to make them good.”

“We did most of our program today. This morning we had a problem with the car and we lost some time in the run, but after that we got the best information we could from the other car and it’s been a good afternoon. The gap with P8 on new tires was pretty good to see and in race pace we can still improve a little bit, so that’s what we’re going to be looking at to get good on Sunday. Our aim is to do as well as we can from now on and look to the future, not the past. We’ve got 10 more races, so we’ll try to make them good.”

“It was good to get out on this track and the car was feeling pretty decent. We ran through the usual programme, and were able to make positive progress. As usual, we identified what we need to do to improve the car and I’m particularly looking forward to tomorrow.”

"Today was a really good day, I'm super happy to be in Budapest as it's one of my favourite tracks. We had two positive sessions and completed a lot of testing. The feeling with the car was good from FP1 and we certainly have a good baseline for the rest of the weekend, so we need to keep building on this. We just need to stay focussed and hopefully keep the good performance for tomorrow."

“It’s been a decent day. There is still a lot of work to do before qualifying, but by the end of second practice we were getting close to a good car balance. I always enjoy driving here: the circuit is one of the highlights of the year and every lap makes me smile. It feels really special in a Formula One car and when the car is working underneath you it’s really good fun.”

“It wasn’t the easiest session for me, but the most important job was collecting the tyre information, which we managed to achieve. Car balance and confidence are really important here, and we have room to improve before qualifying. I’m not worried if it becomes hotter tomorrow or Sunday because we’ve done our homework today.”

“It’s been a positive Friday for us, in terms of the feeling in the car. We did a lot of tests and collected good data, with the morning session focusing more on aero tests and gathering basic information, and the afternoon session about trying out both compounds of tyres. “It was quite warm today, with the asphalt reaching as much as 61 degrees Celsius in FP2 I think, which is quite a record! So, let’s see tomorrow what we can find. “The set-up and balance were not ideal today, as we struggled a little bit with understeer. There is a lot of performance to unlock in the car if we find the right balance. We need to chase the track temperature and track conditions as this is a circuit that always keeps improving with more rubber being laid down by different series running. Tomorrow we’ll have a different track and we need to anticipate that.”

“We had a bit of a messy day, but the car is feeling good and the pace is there, so I think we just wait for tomorrow and work on the things that we see on the data, the feedback, and things should be ok. Some days you just have a lot of traffic and we had some wrong switch headings, little problems that keep you from putting the lap time on the board, but still you get a feeling and you get pieces of the data that you can look into and improve from there. We’ll do a bit more tomorrow and, hopefully, get a clean session where we can verify the things we’re going to change for tomorrow, which won’t be much because I think it was okay today. So, we’re in a good place. Very happy.”

“We missed quite a lot of running today, which never helps the cause. We were reasonable out of the box in the morning but the car just shut down with no warning. Once the Energy Store was changed I was able to get out in the afternoon, but obviously my programme was very different from that intended. On the plus side, we were still in the top ten at the end of FP1, so it wasn’t all bad. Looking at the other side of the garage there doesn’t look to be any major concerns so I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow.”

"It was a pretty clean day and in general I would say it was a good start to the weekend! It looks like we are definitely more competitive than in the previous couple of races and this is positive. Pierre had a very good FP2 having a small pace advantage on me, so we'll be looking at the different test items overnight to try and maximise everything for tomorrow."

„Der Tag ist nicht ideal verlaufen. FP1 war etwas unruhig. Ich hatte ein paar Dreher, und habe dabei meine Reifen beschädigt. Leider konnten wir das Programm danach nicht wie geplant abarbeiten. In FP2 haben wir die verlorene Zeit aufgeholt, und sind eine gute Anzahl an Runden gefahren. Wir haben noch viel Arbeit vor uns, und tun unser Bestes um unsere Leistung für morgen zu steigern.“

“Es war ein etwas schwieriger Tag. Ich bin in der ersten freien Trainingseinheit nicht gefahren, und musste die verlorene Zeit während der zweiten Einheit am Nachmittag nachholen. Wir haben noch viel Arbeit vor uns, um auf das Niveau zu kommen, auf dem wir dieses Wochenende sein möchten. Hoffentlich können wir auf unseren Fortschritten aus den letzten Wochen aufbauen, damit uns ein Schritt in die richtige Richtung gelingt.“

„Für mich war es eine recht produktive Trainingseinheit – mein zweiter Einsatz in FP1 für das Team in dieser Saison. Es ist toll nach nur einer Woche Pause wieder im Auto zu sitzen. Ich fange an, ein besseres Gefühl für das Auto zu entwickeln. Wie auch letzte Woche schon, war mein heutiges Ziel das Programm abzuarbeiten, und dem Team so viel Feedback wie möglich zu geben. Damit bin ich sehr zufrieden. Ich freue mich nun darauf, nächste Woche bei dem Test einen weiteren Tag für das Alfa Romeo Sauber F1 Team zu fahren.“

This has been a usual Friday, just collecting data, information and all that sort of stuff. We have been exploring the front wing a little bit and did some work on the rear wing. We were running the same wing as Silverstone, we have looked into it and made some corrections to it, so it seems more stable now. So far it looks OK. I think rain would give us a bit of an opportunity, as without that it is going to be a difficult weekend. I do enjoy this circuit and it is one of my favourites. It is a real drivers' track and you really have to position the car the right way to get a good laptime. It reminds me a bit of Melbourne and those kind of circuits, as there is not a lot of room for error and it is quite a lot of fun.

“I’m happy with how this Friday went. I had a normal feeling in the car, and we could go back working on the set-up of the car again and not just trying to solve problems all the time. “Unfortunately, I didn’t set any lap-times on the Ultrasoft tyres because I made a mistake and spun off the track. But, our long-run pace looked strong and we’re getting the balance much more together. “There were significant changes from FP1 to FP2 and we gathered a lot of valuable info to put the car in good shape for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to having a good final practice session and then we can prepare as best we can for qualifying. “The target for us is to be as close as possible to the top-ten as I don’t know if actually being in Q3 is a good thing, having to start on the Ultrasoft tyres. All-in-all, it was nice to just have a normal Friday.”

Both sessions were quite tough today, as expected. I’m still quite calm because we’re trying many things. There’s quite a lot of work going on with the car so it’s normal that some things go better than others. Some things we’re spot on with, and others we’re still struggling with. It was like that in Germany after the Friday sessions. I knew we had done a good programme and tested many things, but last week didn’t feel that good either. Once we looked into everything, the performance was better on the Saturday. I’m quite confident we can do that tomorrow. For now, it’s been a productive day and we just have to analyse everything.