Ferrari Flying Early In Budapest

Scuderia Ferrari was quickest today in both free practice sessions for the 2022 Hungarian Grand Prix, in the first with Carlos Sainz and in the second with Charles Leclerc when the lap times came down. The team got through all its planned programme, working on set-up and tyre management.

As always at the Hungaroring, the track condition evolved as the racing line cleaned up and the cars put rubber down. The team evaluated the Soft tyres in the first session and the Mediums in the second one, working towards Sunday’s race as well as qualifying, although the weather forecast for tomorrow looks complicated with a series of heavy rain storms due to hit the Magyar track.

FP1. In the first session Carlos and Charles only ran the Soft tyres, getting down to 1’18”750, the fastest lap of the session and 1’19”039. Between them they completed 52 laps, 26 each.

FP2. In the second hour, both Charles and Carlos went out on Medium tyres, Charles immediately posting a good 1’18”911 and Carlos setting a time of 1’19”392. After switching to the Softs, Leclerc got down to 1’18”445 and Sainz did a 1’18”676. Once again, towards the end of the hour, more fuel was put in the cars as the drivers tackled some long runs on both compounds.

Tomorrow. The cars will be back on track at 13 CEST for the final free practice session, prior to qualifying at 16.

Charles Leclerc

“With weather conditions likely to be variable this weekend, our main focus was on set-up work today. We did some race simulations too, as we may not have the chance to collect representative data in FP3 tomorrow. Though track evolution is always quite high here, it was lower than we expected today. It will be key to put the tyres in the right window tomorrow.”

Carlos Sainz

“It has been an interesting Friday. The car felt very good straight out of the garage in FP1 and we could put together some very good laps. For FP2 we tried a couple of changes in the set-up to evaluate which direction is best to take for tomorrow and the race. We lost the feeling a bit, but we are in a good place in terms of car balance and pace. It looks like tomorrow might be wet, so we’ll have to adapt to the conditions. Today was a positive day for the team and I look forward to the rest of the weekend.”