Just five days after the
German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, Formula 1 has
decamped to another “Ring” this time the Hungaroring.
Not much change in the name, nor in the top two places
on the results sheet: at the end of the German Grand
Prix, Lewis Hamilton was the winner for McLaren and
Fernando Alonso was second for Ferrari and that is how
the two men finished the first day of free practice for
the Hungarian Grand Prix yesterday. The biggest change
is that Fernando Alonso is now a year old than he was
last week, as the Spaniard celebrates his thirtieth
birthday today. It was a birthday which he and team-mate
Felipe Massa, who was sixth fastest, spent working hard,
racking up a big number of laps, 134 between them.
As usual, the in-season testing ban means that Friday’s
three hours of track time has to be spent not only in
preparation for Sunday’s race, but also evaluating new
components brought to the track: at this point in the
season, some teams slow their 2011 car development
programme to concentrate fully on 2012, but those who
are still fighting tooth and nail for this year’s titles
cannot afford to do that. In Hungary, Pirelli has
returned to what might be called Ferrari’s favourite
tyre combination, the Soft and Supersoft for this
weekend and it will be interesting to see how they
perform in the higher temperatures we can expect for the
next two days.
Third fastest yesterday was Jenson Button in the second
McLaren, ahead of Mark Webber, who damaged his Red Bull
in the morning, after colliding with a barrier. Fifth is
his team-mate and championship leader, Sebastian Vettel.
Fernando
Alonso: “First of all
thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes on my
thirtieth, especially to Bernie, who came along to wish
me the best along with you journalists during the press
meeting! It’s nice to celebrate here with Ferrari, a
team I will definitely be with at least until I am
thirty five…We finished the planned work programme and
that’s always a positive start to a race weekend. Now we
will analyse all the data gathered and make the best
choices for qualifying and the race. I am pleased I was
able to do so much running, especially from the point of
view of studying the tyre degradation, which at this
track is always a significant factor. The track is still
very dirty, as is the norm for a Friday at the
Hungaroring: however, we know it will improve each day
and by Sunday afternoon, it will be much more rubbered
in than today. We saw that McLaren looks very strong, as
indeed it was last weekend. Now we must try and improve
the car, especially in the third sector of the track,
where we seem to be suffering more than most.”
Felipe Massa: “We got through a lot of
work, especially in terms of comparing the two Pirelli
tyres. The first signs are that degradation is
significant, both on the Prime and the Option, which
will be a decisive factor when it comes to strategy. I
think we will witness a very close contest between the
usual three teams, Red Bull, McLaren and ourselves. It
will be not be easy to get a useful grid position, but
it will be very important to do so, because I think
that, despite everything, overtaking at this track will
still be very difficult. I was not able to do a quick
time on my first lap with the Super Soft, because I ran
wide at Turn 9, so today’s lap time is not totally
representative of the potential at my disposal: the
tyres degrade easily so you have to give it your best
immediately. I told Fernando this morning, “you are
getting old like me!” Joking apart, it’s an important
day for him, so he gets all my best wishes again!”
Pat Fry: “As usual we had a packed
programme to get through, including an evaluation of
various configurations both on the aerodynamic front and
in terms of the management of the exhaust gases. We
concentrated principally on the updates to the 150º
Italia in the morning and then in the afternoon, we
switched more towards finding the best set-up on the car
and on a comparison between the two types of tyre
Pirelli has brought for this race. As you can imagine,
there is nothing new under the sun: really just a Friday
like so many others. The obvious consequence of that is
it’s very hard to say where we are compared to our
closest rivals. The only thing we can be sure of is that
Red Bull and McLaren both seem very competitive,
irrespective of the fuel levels they were running. Tyre
degradation is more or less what we expected but we have
to take into account that track conditions change a lot
over the course of the weekend as the track rubbers in.
Predictions? It will be a very close qualifying and even
the race looks like being hard to read, especially as
there could be various strategies implemented.”
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