|
|
 |
|
With last
Sunday's result at Hockenheim still the hot
topic of conversation Ferrari chose to
celebrate Fernando Alonso’s birthday out of
the glare of the spotlight, presenting the
Spaniard, who has turned twenty nine, with a
giant birthday cake in Budapest. The entire
team turned out to wish Fernando the best
and team principal Stefano Domenicali
expressed the good wishes of all the Ferrari
family. Alonso said: “I will never forget
this first birthday spent with you and I am
speechless at the warmth of this gesture. To
be here at the very track where I took my
first ever Formula 1 win all goes to make
this a truly magical moment. Thanks to all
of you.” |
|
|
|
With the
controversy over last Sunday's "team orders" that gifted
Fernando Alonso victory in Germany still raging Scuderia
Ferrari appears to have made a competitive start to the
Hungarian Grand Prix weekend today. Alonso ended the day
second fastest, splitting the two dominant cars this
season, the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel, who topped the
time sheet and team-mate Mark Webber in third. Felipe
Massa was right behind in fourth place.
The morning session at this circuit is always
complicated, as the barely used track surface is very
dirty and lacks grip, before gradually improving
throughout the day, but the Scuderia had a busy time
nevertheless, with Felipe running with and without the
blown rear wing to evaluate what would be the best
solution on this generally low speed track. The rest of
the day was given over to the usual Friday work of
analysing set-up and balance on the F10 and evaluating
the two types of tyre the drivers must use for Sunday’s
race. Vitaly Petrov was fifth for Renault, with his
team-mate Robert Kubica seventh, while Lewis Hamilton’s
McLaren was the meat in the French sandwich.
A productive day for Scuderia Ferrari then,
which also owed something to the fact that the threat of
rain did not materialise, although current forecasts
predict the possibility of a storm just in time for the
final Q3 part of tomorrow’s qualifying session.
Stefano
Domenicali. “Overall, we
are reasonably pleased with what we have seen today. The
car seems to be competitive, although it has to be said
that the Red Bulls were very strong. Now we must prepare
as well as possible for qualifying and the race, with
the aim of picking up a lot of points, continuing in the
same vein as we began in Hockenheim.”
Fernando Alonso: “I hope we can stay
close to our main rivals, who seemed very strong today
and be able to fight them in Q3 tomorrow afternoon. For
now, we are still a bit behind by a few tenths, even if
we won’t know the truth until qualifying. We certainly
need to work on the set-up of the car to improve its
performance, especially in the second and third sectors.
Compared to Hockenheim, where the car was well balanced,
here we are suffering with a bit too much understeer,
but all the same it feels pretty good. We did various
aerodynamic tests and, in the end, it seems the car is
more competitive without the blown rear wing. Overall,
we are happy with how things went today, even if we are
well aware that one cannot rely much on Friday’s times.
As for McLaren, whom one should not forget lead both
championships, we seem to have the upper hand, but so
often we have seen them struggle on a Friday before then
being very competitive. Tomorrow afternoon, it will be
very important to secure a place in the top three
because it would be hard to fight for the win starting
further back.”
Felipe Massa: “As has generally been
the case this year, we need to work on our performance
on the first timed lap: our main rivals manage to set a
time quickly while we struggle a bit more. This is
vital, especially for qualifying which, at a track like
this, is even more critical than usual. In particular,
we have to get the front tyres working as well as
possible. In terms of race pace, I would say we are
pretty good, as was also demonstrated in Hockenhiem.
Returning to driving at this track was not difficult for
me: when you are in the car and you shut the visor, you
only think about going quickly. It was definitely good
yesterday to go to the medical centre and meet the
people who took care of me immediately after the
accident, and it was equally emotional to have dinner
with the surgeon who operated on me at Budapest’s AEK
hospital: I wish to take this opportunity to once again
thank everyone for what they did for me one year ago;
they are really extraordinary people.”
Chris Dyer: “It was a very busy day
because we had so many irons in the fire. This morning,
we concentrated on development of new solutions for the
forthcoming races, almost like an old-style test day and
we also tried to evaluate carefully the performance of
some aerodynamic updates which we brought here, as well
as looking at the behaviour of the F10 with and without
the blown rear wing. In the second session, we went back
to the standard Friday programme, looking at defining
the best set up of the car and tyre work. We completed
both programmes with no particular problems, apart from
a small electrical fault towards the end on Alonso’s
car, which prevented him from getting the most out of
the long run on soft tyres. From what we have seen, the
performance is reasonably good: we can expect a very
close qualifying and we hope to be in the fight for the
front rows.”
|
|
|
