| The 12th round of the 2018 FIA Formula One World Championship began with practice Friday at the Hungaroring in Budapest as teams prepared for the Hungarian Grand Prix Sunday.
Two 90-minute sessions – FP1 and FP2 – on the 4.381-kilometer (2.722-mile), 14-turn circuit were run under sunny and warm conditions, with Haas F1 Team drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen navigating the tight and compact track.
Both drivers began FP1 on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow soft tire before transitioning to the Purple ultrasoft. Grosjean overcame a lack of track time as his crew investigated a leak on his Haas VF-18 to set the seventh-quickest time. He ran 17 laps with his best-of-the-rest mark of 1:18.975 coming on his final tour while utilizing the ultrasoft compound. Magnussen’s best time was a 1:19.187 on his 19th lap, also set on ultrasofts. He ran 29 laps and posted the 10th-quickest time.
Leading the way in FP1 was Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo, whose fast lap of 1:17.613 was .079 of a second better than the next quickest driver, Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
Speeds picked up and lap times dropped in FP2. Grosjean held steady as the seventh-fastest driver in FP2 behind the heavyweight teams of Scuderia Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes with a time of 1:18.065, which was .91 of a second better than his best lap in FP1. His quick time came on the 16th of his 39 laps on a set of ultrasoft tires. Magnussen shaved .307 of a second off his FP1 time with a lap of 1:18.880 to earn the 13th-fastest time. His quick lap came on his 17th tour, also while utilizing the ultrasoft tire. He completed 35 laps.
Grosjean began FP2 on Yellow softs and ran 10 laps until doing the bulk of his running on ultrasofts, returning to softs for the final 10 minutes of track time. Magnussen opted to start on the White medium tire, running nine laps before outfitting his Haas VF-18 with ultrasofts. Magnussen then went back to mediums in the last five minutes of the session.
Vettel topped FP2 with a mark of 1:16.834, which was .074 of a second better than his nearest pursuer, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. The Hungaroring track record of 1:16.276, set last year by Vettel in the final round of qualifying, remained intact.
Between the two sessions, Haas F1 Team ran a total of 120 laps – 64 by Magnussen and 56 by Grosjean.
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“We did most of our program today. This morning we had a problem with the car and we lost some time in the run, but after that we got the best information we could from the other car and it’s been a good afternoon. The gap with P8 on new tires was pretty good to see and in race pace we can still improve a little bit, so that’s what we’re going to be looking at to get good on Sunday. Our aim is to do as well as we can from now on and look to the future, not the past. We’ve got 10 more races, so we’ll try to make them good.”
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“We had a bit of a messy day, but the car is feeling good and the pace is there, so I think we just wait for tomorrow and work on the things that we see on the data, the feedback, and things should be ok. Some days you just have a lot of traffic and we had some wrong switch headings, little problems that keep you from putting the lap time on the board, but still you get a feeling and you get pieces of the data that you can look into and improve from there. We’ll do a bit more tomorrow and, hopefully, get a clean session where we can verify the things we’re going to change for tomorrow, which won’t be much because I think it was okay today. So, we’re in a good place. Very happy.” |
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“Pretty good day. We had two small issues which we worked through on the cars. Otherwise, there’s a little more work to be done, but I think for tomorrow we’ll have a good day.”
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Drivers have one more practice session on Saturday (12:00-13:00 local time) before qualifying starts at 15:00. Qualifying consists of three rounds, with the 15 fastest drivers from Q1 moving on to Q2. Then, the 10 fastest drivers from Q2 advance to Q3 where they’ll battle for the pole. Haas F1 Team PR |
