Pat Fry had a brief
meeting with the press at the Hungaroring circuit,
shortly after the end of a qualifying session yesterday
which saw the two 150º Italia cars again qualifying
fourth and fifth. Asked if he was disappointed because
this track was expected to suit the Ferrari better than
some, the technical chief explained it was not so
straightforward. “Of course, I would love to be on
pole,” he began. “But this season it is hard to predict
and some of the performance differences between the
teams has been down to the nature of the track and how
different cars are better suited to some types of
circuit. Our car is more suited to the faster turns like
at Silverstone for example, rather than the slow corners
we have here.”
One of the reasons the media seemed to expect a faster
Ferrari here is that the choice of Soft and Super Soft
tyres is reputed to favour the car’s characteristics.
“If you look back to Barcelona, we had particular
problems warming up the hard tyre, which is something we
are well aware of,” said Fry. However, if you look here,
with the Soft tyre, there have also been difficulties
because I would say that Lewis (Hamilton) was the only
driver who managed to get a quick lap out of the Soft on
a first lap, while for us the best time on this tyre
came on the third lap. Again, it is down to the nature
of the car balance.”
Friday practice is very much a test session for all the
teams and Fry clarified some aspects of what the
Scuderia had been evaluating yesterday in Hungary. “The
front wing we tested here was not intended for use here,
but we might introduce it at Spa or Monza,” explained
the Englishman. “As for the rear wing, it did not
perform as expected and we are not running it here.
However, we understand the issues we had with it and
therefore it will be used later in the year.”
Inevitably, the intriguing topic of using exhaust gases
for aero purposes continues to interest the media, so
Fry shed some light on how the system works at Ferrari:
“Some corners we are hot blowing and in others we are
cold blowing and for us it is possible to switch from
one to another quite easily, whereas other teams have to
use their car one way only, whereas we can switch quite
easily between the two depending on the corner.”
And finally, a question relating to the personnel
structure put into place at Maranello after the Spanish
GP drew this response from Fry. “There is strength in
depth at Ferrari in terms of people and now we are
concentrating on getting them to work well together, so
we have not really needed to take on many new staff.
There have been a few new hirings, but these had already
been planned well before the changes that were
introduced after the Spanish Grand Prix.”
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