The Friday in F1 Hungarian GP saw McLaren pair take the lead comfortably, as the chasing pack were separated by small margin in their fight to take on the Top 2.
It was not an easy Friday for McLaren pair in F1 Hungarian GP at Hungaroring, but the duo had good enough margin over the competition behind. It was Lando Norris on top ahead of Oscar Piastri, with the two to fight among themselves mostly for the top spot.
Both felt good in the car from get go, even though they think there were tricky moments across the sessions. Both had their separate moments, which included one close one when Norris locked-up and Piastri went through him right at the end of FP2 session.
Their closest rival was Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque felt good but admitted McLaren to be too far ahead to catch. His teammate Lewis Hamilton did not enjoy the day after balance issues across both the practice sessions. He was in the Top 10, but not as competitive as his teammate.
The Mercedes F1 pair, meanwhile, found some rhythm after reverting to its old suspension. It wasn’t a breakthrough but they could identify that the Imola update made things difficult for them. Both George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli felt better and confident in the car.
They still need to find more time to get back in the podium fight, though. They were helped slightly by Red Bull’s misery. Both Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda suffered through grip issues to find themselves at the lower edges of the Top 10 and in the fight to get into points.
Norris: “I mean, the car since the first lap has felt pretty good. All my laps have been decent. I think the [FP2] session end was a little bit more messy, just on low fuel, high fuel, a few more mistakes. It’s all part of practice and trying to find the limits in different areas. A good understanding… I think I know what I want from the car, but it might be a bit harder trying to get it. I mean, I have a better car than I had last year, so more chance – but some tough competition.”
Leclerc: “For now it looks like it’s our position, and realistically I think it’s going to be very tough to go and beat the McLarens tomorrow – they seem to be a step forward, but never say never. The feeling with the car has been pretty positive so far. We’ve got to do some steps, more in the right direction for tomorrow, but for now the feeling is good. For now we are, but we can never rule them out. It’s always very variable from Friday to Saturday, so I think we’ll have to see tomorrow when we come to the track and see with the new conditions whether the pecking order is the same.”
Hamilton: “Today was not a good day for me, a big, big struggle with the balance of the car and a lot different to the previous years I’ve been here. We tried two different things, we tried rectifying some of the balance problems we had in FP1. We changed the car for FP2 and it’s just inconsistent, very, very inconsistent balance from corner to corner, so you can’t say it’s just understeer, you can’t just say it’s oversteer. It’s just far from being on rails and very out of balance. But I think it’s probably something to do with maybe tyre temperatures or something, so we’re going to try to figure that out for tomorrow. I mean, Charles has been quick today – he’s been generally happy with the car. For me I’m quite far off, so I highly doubt it.”
Russell: “It always feels good when you’re a bit higher up the leaderboard. Bit of a strange day, obviously the Aston Martins looked unusually fast today, they seemed to make a decent step forward. McLaren are obviously in a league of their own. We just need to find that last little bit for it to start clicking again for us. Today it wasn’t a breakthrough but it wasn’t like we were expecting it to be a breakthrough. We’ve just to keep on chipping away.”
Verstappen: “Today was very tough. Just really a low-grip feeling and not really a balance in the car. It’s difficult to say what is even the exact problem, nothing really worked. It’s something that we have to investigate over night because so far of course it’s not been our weekend. I’m sure that we will do better [over the rest of the weekend] but today was quite bad so we need to really understand first where it is and what is causing us to have such big problems with the car.
“McLaren looks really on it, they’re flying, but naturally of course I want to be a little bit closer to P3. It was just a towel that you normally wipe your face with when you come back in. It was still in the car when I went out so instead of it maybe potentially flying in between my feet which is the dangerous part, I drove off line and got rid of it in the safest way possible. I think the stewards understand that.”
The Top 10 featured a surprise pair of Aston Martin in FP2. After Fernando Alonso missed FP1 due to back issues, where Felipe Drugovich stepped in for him, the Spaniard managed to put in a good time despite the understeer issue. He expanded on the injury he is carrying since Belgium race.
Teammate Lance Stroll did a good job as well, but both are not certain where they end up eventually. Visa Cash App RB’s Isack Hadjar found himself in a good space too. He ended up in the Top 10 in both the sessions, even though he isn’t feeling 100% yet in the car.
Teammate Liam Lawson felt he had pace as well, but traffic cost him hugely. The Williams F1 pair had a mixed run. They were in a good space in FP1 but didn’t end well in FP2. Alexander Albon felt positive still, even though he didn’t manage to get a fast lap in the second session.
But Carlos Sainz had his share of issues across the sessions. It included the radio call about losing communications and telemetry, which came back up after a brief outage. The Haas F1 duo were closer to the Top 10, but both Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman did not gel well with the car.
They reckon they need a step-up for a Top 10 fight. Sauber found themselves at the ack too, especially with Gabriel Bortoleto, who struggled all day. Nico Hulkenberg managed to do better in just one session after substitute Paul Aron’s run ended early due to power unit issue. Both Alpine’s Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto admitted that they will have to dig deep on Saturday.
Alonso: “It’s the same as yesterday. It’s going to be like this the whole weekend. I have a small injury on my muscle on the back in the lumbar area and I needed some rest, but the summer break is coming, so it’s another two days of managing the comfort in the seat. Yesterday, we found different solutions with pads and other things that are working fine, so today, I had no pain in FP2, so that is positive. The thing is that we did an MRI last week just to check properly, and we saw a small injury in the muscle. So if you are a normal person, you would sit a little bit for two weeks, but I think it is manageable.
“I don’t have pain in the car, which is the main thing. Obviously, I missed FP1, but FP2 felt good. The balance is still not in the window where I would probably like the car to be. There’s a bit of understeer mid-corner, and I struggled to rotate the car on low speed, but normal for a first practice of the weekend. Let’s see what we can change overnight. A couple of tests that the guys did in FP1, we need to review the data and put together the fastest car for tomorrow.”
Hadjar: “The car is feeling really strong, and we had a solid FP1. In FP2, the top teams started to show their pace, so we dropped down the timings a bit, but the car still felt great. There are a few areas where I’m not completely comfortable yet, but it’s still quick, and we have some margin to improve. FP2 gave us a more accurate picture of our true pace this weekend. It’s a high downforce track, and driving here is a lot of fun.”
Ocon: “In FP1, we had a decent car but we didn’t optimise the lap perfectly, there was a bit more in it. In FP2, I think we took a little step back as it wasn’t as clean a session and the car felt a little bit more difficult to drive. It didn’t exactly have the right balance and corners, so we’ll work hard tonight to fix that and get more performance out of tomorrow. In one tenth, there’s like six positions in it, so it all makes a huge difference. We need to put it all together.”
Sainz: “We had a few issues today but, ultimately, we don’t seem to have the performance we want this weekend. We did expect this track to be challenging for us, and we’ve tried to find areas of performance all day with different set-ups. We’ll take all the learnings from today, make some changes overnight and give our best shot tomorrow at the top 10 in Qualifying.”
Gasly: “It’s been a tricky day for us in Budapest. The car felt generally quite difficult to drive and we really struggled to put together a complete lap. We were just sliding a lot across both sessions and we know traction is an area we have tended to struggle with so far this season. I am sure we can improve things and I know we will put in a lot of effort tonight and in the morning to be in a better position by the next session. At recent races, we have had a similar trend where we have lacked some performance through practice and still managed to come away with a good result so we remain positive and confident in our abilities to at least make an improvement from today.”
Bortoleto: “It was a decent day overall, although not the best feeling I’ve had with the car so far. FP2 was particularly challenging – especially on the soft compound, where I struggled a bit with balance and low-fuel performance. That said, race pace looked encouraging, and practice is all about testing and learning. I was able to make some improvements on the driving side, which is always positive. We have another session tomorrow to fine-tune everything ahead of qualifying, and I’m confident we can put together a strong package. The team has been doing a fantastic job all season, constantly improving, and I believe we’re in a good position to fight for competitive results here in Hungary.”
Drugovich: “I just got given the targets and off we went, and I think it was a pretty good session. I think everything was quite smooth. We got the data done that we needed. I even got a soft tyre run, which is always nice. My lap was a bit messy, full of traffic, and then after I had a massive lock-up into Turn 1 in the second half, which was probably not ideal, but I needed to try to get some fun out of it, so it was all good, no problem with that.”
Aron: “First of all, a big thank you to the team for the opportunity to jump back in the car. After a great weekend in Silverstone, I was really looking forward to building on that momentum and taking another step forward here. Things started off well and the first laps felt good on the hard compound. A technical issue after the initial run, however, meant we had to stop the car as a precaution. Of course, it’s a pity for the whole team to cut the session short, but that’s just part of the game in motorsport. In the end, even a few laps are valuable, and I’m thankful for the experience.”
Here’s towel incident of Max Verstappen: https://x.com/F1/status/1951323873414172787
Here’s how FP1 in F1 Hungarian GP panned out
Here’s how FP2 in F1 Hungarian GP panned out