News
25th July 2014, 17:40
Lewis Hamilton on why poor grip out on track made life difficult for all the teams; Toro Rosso duo Daniil Kvyat and Jean-Eric Vergne on their contrasting fortunes; and Nico Rosberg on why Mercedes' pace comes as a surprise despite their proven advantage over the rest of the field. The drivers and senior team personnel report back after a error-strewn opening day at the Hungaroring...
Toro Rosso
Daniil Kvyat, P1 - 1:28.208, 13th; P2 - 1:26.689, 11th
"It was a busy Friday as usual where we tried to get as many things done as possible. I enjoy driving this track but I wasn't too happy with the car balance in FP1, but we made a step forward during the afternoon's session. Hopefully we can make another step forward tomorrow."
Jean-Eric Vergne, P1 - 1:27.683, 7th; P2 - 1:26.703, 12th
"There is some good and bad today. This morning I was quite happy with the car's behaviour but in the afternoon the balance got worse, making it difficult to drive. We need to understand why we lost performance in FP2 to get the best out of the car tomorrow but I still believe we have the potential to improve."
Phil Charles, Toro Rosso chief race engineer
"The morning session was quite good, but this did not continue into FP2, where we lost a little bit of balance with the car. At the end of the session, Daniil was happier with the balance, while JEV was not too pleased. There was a slight increase in track temperature which has given us a little bit of unhappiness with the car, so we need to understand the effect of the track temperature on the tyres and how we correct for that over the weekend. In terms of working through the programme, we managed to tick off most items on our relatively long test list. But all in all we are not yet where we want to be with the car, so there is still some work to do tonight."
Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton, P1 - 1:25.814, 1st; P2 - 1:24.482, 1st
"We struggled with poor grip on track today. I don't know if that's down to the tyres or the track itself but it was quite bad throughout both sessions. It's going to be important to get a good grid position tomorrow as it will be difficult to follow cars on this track and it's always tough to overtake here. We have some work to do overnight to ensure we get the best setup for the weekend as we're not fully comfortable with the car just yet, but our race pace looked okay. We'll have to look through the data to really know where we stand."
Nico Rosberg, P1 - 1:25.997, 2nd; P2 - 1:24.720, 2nd
"I was a bit surprised that we had the quickest car here today as I expected the Red Bulls to have gotten a bit closer again, so that's a really encouraging start to the weekend. The car feels great and is super quick in the corners, so overall I'm quite happy. I definitely still need to find some time and there is some setup work for me and my engineers to do tonight if we want to achieve that. But I'm confident that we can make it happen. Qualifying will be crucial here, as overtaking is not easy at this great track. We'll work hard as always during the evening and see what happens tomorrow."
Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
"It was great to re-join the team today after my short "break" in Vienna! There was no place I wanted to be more than with the guys and girls here in Hungary today and it felt good to be back at work. In that respect, it was great to see Lewis and Nico performing strongly on both single lap pace and over the long runs. This is a demanding circuit for many aspects of the car and we will still have work to do overnight to dial both set-ups into the circuit. But the initial indication on the relative performance was good. Now we need to properly analyse the situation in order to make sure we are in strong shape for tomorrow."
Paddy Lowe, Mercedes team executive director (technical)
"We enjoyed two trouble-free sessions today with both cars and had plenty of laps in which to do our homework for tomorrow and Sunday. Generally, the grip levels on track were low and we had to work to get the cars balance to the drivers' liking. But, as always on a Friday evening, there is still some margin for improvement here. This circuit traditionally sees among the highest track temperatures of the year and once again today they peaked at 57 degrees centigrade. In these conditions, the tyres were holding up well, which is a positive indication for the race on Sunday."
Caterham
Kamui Kobayashi, P1 - 1:30.363, 19th; P2 - 1:28.370, 19th
"Overall, it's been a better Friday than we've had for a while. We made good progress on nearly every run and it looks like from our times today that we may be quite a bit more competitive with our nearest rivals than for quite a few races. Good reliability has been one of the keys to that, from us and Renault, so we should be pretty pleased with how Friday's gone for us in Hungary.
"In FP2 we went straight out on a set of mediums for the first run and I immediately had quite a lot of understeer pretty much everywhere. We tried another mechanical change and the balance did improve a little, but on my quickest lap on the second run I had a small spin so we boxed to go onto the soft tyres for the first time. The car definitely felt better on the softs than the mediums, and on the long run they held up pretty well, so that gives us some good strategy options for Sunday. Now we have to continue this performance through to tomorrow and Sunday and aim to fight as hard as we can in quali and the race."
Marcus Ericsson, P1 - 1:30.892, 20th; P2 - 1:29.036, 22nd
"At the start of FP1 the grip level was just so low - the car was sliding around everywhere and I couldn't push anywhere around the track. I know the Hungaroring is always pretty green at the start of the weekend, but it was worse than I'd expected. You can go chasing the track when it's like this, trying to find set-ups that work, but we have to let the track come to us as the grip level improves overall, so for the next run we continued with the plan and were improving, little by little as the session went on.
"The track temps had gone up a lot in FP2 and for me the car was behaving quite strangely on the first run. It was switching from understeer to oversteer through most of the corners and, honestly, it was quite hard not to make a mistake. On the options the balance improved quite a bit and as the track was rubbering in the grip levels finally started improving. It's good to see we've made progress here from setup, it gives us a chance to be much more competitive with Marussia than we've been for a while, so after we've been through all the data from today we want to continue to improve tomorrow, and again on Sunday."
Christijan Albers, Caterham team principal
"From all aspects of our team operations this has been a much improved Friday for us. Our performance levels have increased, both in the garage and on track, and good reliability from us, Renault Sport F1 and Red Bull Technology has helped us achieve all our targets today. We also have a number of new sponsors on the cars here in Hungary which shows that we are making positive progress across all areas of the team - now we aim to continue this upward trend for the rest of the weekend."
Cedrik Staudohar, Renault Sport F1 track support leader:
"We had a positive day today and were able to complete the entirety of our programme on both cars. We conducted a couple of tests with energy management and ignition settings and everything went well - all in all a positive Friday that we hope to build on tomorrow."
Lotus
Romain Grosjean, P1 - 1:28.593, 17th; P2 - 1:27.021, 17th
"The car feels pretty reasonable here even if we missed a lot of the afternoon session because of a problem with the cooling system. It's a circuit I love so of course it was frustrating to miss track time as it's what you want to improve the car. As always, we have a reasonable amount of work to do ahead of tomorrow's qualifying, where we will be pushing all the way as grid position is so important here."
Pastor Maldonado, P1 - 1:28.266, 14th; P2 - 1:27.019, 16th
"It was an okay day for me and we didn't have any problems with my car which is always a positive. The car balance doesn't feel bad but getting grip from the tyres is the biggest challenge here. It's pretty hot and we expect that to be the same tomorrow, which should be good for tyre warm-up. I think we could perform better here than we have of late; that's certainly the target."
Alan Permane, Lotus trackside operations director
"It was a fairly normal Friday for us. We completed aerodynamic evaluations during the morning practice and focused on tyres and on long runs work in the afternoon. Unfortunately Romain had a problem with the water system on his car which limited his running quite a bit. It's been a productive day and there's more potential in the car. We have collected some useful data to enable us to be much further up the timesheets tomorrow."
More to follow...
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Toro Rosso
Daniil Kvyat, P1 - 1:28.208, 13th; P2 - 1:26.689, 11th
"It was a busy Friday as usual where we tried to get as many things done as possible. I enjoy driving this track but I wasn't too happy with the car balance in FP1, but we made a step forward during the afternoon's session. Hopefully we can make another step forward tomorrow."
Jean-Eric Vergne, P1 - 1:27.683, 7th; P2 - 1:26.703, 12th
"There is some good and bad today. This morning I was quite happy with the car's behaviour but in the afternoon the balance got worse, making it difficult to drive. We need to understand why we lost performance in FP2 to get the best out of the car tomorrow but I still believe we have the potential to improve."
Phil Charles, Toro Rosso chief race engineer
"The morning session was quite good, but this did not continue into FP2, where we lost a little bit of balance with the car. At the end of the session, Daniil was happier with the balance, while JEV was not too pleased. There was a slight increase in track temperature which has given us a little bit of unhappiness with the car, so we need to understand the effect of the track temperature on the tyres and how we correct for that over the weekend. In terms of working through the programme, we managed to tick off most items on our relatively long test list. But all in all we are not yet where we want to be with the car, so there is still some work to do tonight."
Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton, P1 - 1:25.814, 1st; P2 - 1:24.482, 1st
"We struggled with poor grip on track today. I don't know if that's down to the tyres or the track itself but it was quite bad throughout both sessions. It's going to be important to get a good grid position tomorrow as it will be difficult to follow cars on this track and it's always tough to overtake here. We have some work to do overnight to ensure we get the best setup for the weekend as we're not fully comfortable with the car just yet, but our race pace looked okay. We'll have to look through the data to really know where we stand."
Nico Rosberg, P1 - 1:25.997, 2nd; P2 - 1:24.720, 2nd
"I was a bit surprised that we had the quickest car here today as I expected the Red Bulls to have gotten a bit closer again, so that's a really encouraging start to the weekend. The car feels great and is super quick in the corners, so overall I'm quite happy. I definitely still need to find some time and there is some setup work for me and my engineers to do tonight if we want to achieve that. But I'm confident that we can make it happen. Qualifying will be crucial here, as overtaking is not easy at this great track. We'll work hard as always during the evening and see what happens tomorrow."
Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
"It was great to re-join the team today after my short "break" in Vienna! There was no place I wanted to be more than with the guys and girls here in Hungary today and it felt good to be back at work. In that respect, it was great to see Lewis and Nico performing strongly on both single lap pace and over the long runs. This is a demanding circuit for many aspects of the car and we will still have work to do overnight to dial both set-ups into the circuit. But the initial indication on the relative performance was good. Now we need to properly analyse the situation in order to make sure we are in strong shape for tomorrow."
Paddy Lowe, Mercedes team executive director (technical)
"We enjoyed two trouble-free sessions today with both cars and had plenty of laps in which to do our homework for tomorrow and Sunday. Generally, the grip levels on track were low and we had to work to get the cars balance to the drivers' liking. But, as always on a Friday evening, there is still some margin for improvement here. This circuit traditionally sees among the highest track temperatures of the year and once again today they peaked at 57 degrees centigrade. In these conditions, the tyres were holding up well, which is a positive indication for the race on Sunday."
Caterham
Kamui Kobayashi, P1 - 1:30.363, 19th; P2 - 1:28.370, 19th
"Overall, it's been a better Friday than we've had for a while. We made good progress on nearly every run and it looks like from our times today that we may be quite a bit more competitive with our nearest rivals than for quite a few races. Good reliability has been one of the keys to that, from us and Renault, so we should be pretty pleased with how Friday's gone for us in Hungary.
"In FP2 we went straight out on a set of mediums for the first run and I immediately had quite a lot of understeer pretty much everywhere. We tried another mechanical change and the balance did improve a little, but on my quickest lap on the second run I had a small spin so we boxed to go onto the soft tyres for the first time. The car definitely felt better on the softs than the mediums, and on the long run they held up pretty well, so that gives us some good strategy options for Sunday. Now we have to continue this performance through to tomorrow and Sunday and aim to fight as hard as we can in quali and the race."
Marcus Ericsson, P1 - 1:30.892, 20th; P2 - 1:29.036, 22nd
"At the start of FP1 the grip level was just so low - the car was sliding around everywhere and I couldn't push anywhere around the track. I know the Hungaroring is always pretty green at the start of the weekend, but it was worse than I'd expected. You can go chasing the track when it's like this, trying to find set-ups that work, but we have to let the track come to us as the grip level improves overall, so for the next run we continued with the plan and were improving, little by little as the session went on.
"The track temps had gone up a lot in FP2 and for me the car was behaving quite strangely on the first run. It was switching from understeer to oversteer through most of the corners and, honestly, it was quite hard not to make a mistake. On the options the balance improved quite a bit and as the track was rubbering in the grip levels finally started improving. It's good to see we've made progress here from setup, it gives us a chance to be much more competitive with Marussia than we've been for a while, so after we've been through all the data from today we want to continue to improve tomorrow, and again on Sunday."
Christijan Albers, Caterham team principal
"From all aspects of our team operations this has been a much improved Friday for us. Our performance levels have increased, both in the garage and on track, and good reliability from us, Renault Sport F1 and Red Bull Technology has helped us achieve all our targets today. We also have a number of new sponsors on the cars here in Hungary which shows that we are making positive progress across all areas of the team - now we aim to continue this upward trend for the rest of the weekend."
Cedrik Staudohar, Renault Sport F1 track support leader:
"We had a positive day today and were able to complete the entirety of our programme on both cars. We conducted a couple of tests with energy management and ignition settings and everything went well - all in all a positive Friday that we hope to build on tomorrow."
Lotus
Romain Grosjean, P1 - 1:28.593, 17th; P2 - 1:27.021, 17th
"The car feels pretty reasonable here even if we missed a lot of the afternoon session because of a problem with the cooling system. It's a circuit I love so of course it was frustrating to miss track time as it's what you want to improve the car. As always, we have a reasonable amount of work to do ahead of tomorrow's qualifying, where we will be pushing all the way as grid position is so important here."
Pastor Maldonado, P1 - 1:28.266, 14th; P2 - 1:27.019, 16th
"It was an okay day for me and we didn't have any problems with my car which is always a positive. The car balance doesn't feel bad but getting grip from the tyres is the biggest challenge here. It's pretty hot and we expect that to be the same tomorrow, which should be good for tyre warm-up. I think we could perform better here than we have of late; that's certainly the target."
Alan Permane, Lotus trackside operations director
"It was a fairly normal Friday for us. We completed aerodynamic evaluations during the morning practice and focused on tyres and on long runs work in the afternoon. Unfortunately Romain had a problem with the water system on his car which limited his running quite a bit. It's been a productive day and there's more potential in the car. We have collected some useful data to enable us to be much further up the timesheets tomorrow."
More to follow...
For tickets and travel to 2014 FORMULA 1 races, click here (http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc9 24805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftickets.formula1.com%2F).
For FORMULA 1 merchandise,