F1 insider: Hungary practice
2010-07-31 13:20
Author: Dieter Rencken
From the moment the Red Bulls hit the track for Friday morning’s opening session for Sunday’s 70-lap Hungarian Grand Prix right through to the final second of the afternoon runs, there existed absolutely no doubt that the blue cars were the fastest cars on the Hungaroring.
They only ventured out in earnest halfway through the first session, immediately lapping two seconds up on the rest. In fact, so dominant was the brace of R6s that just 0.13 seconds separated Sebastian Vettel from team-mate Mark Webber, while the gap to third-placed Robert Kubica’s Renault was close on a second.
That there was a trio of Renault-powered cars in the top three was significant in itself, as the French 2.4-litre V8 has long had a reputation for driveability – although believed to be around 40 horsepower shy on the Mercedes/Ferrari units – and the tight, twisty clockwise circuit situated in a natural (dust) bowl 25 kilometres north-east of the country’s capital Budapest rewards flexibility above all else.
The first race at the Hungaroring was held in 1986 – after the venue replaced Kyalami on the calendar for political reasons – and F1 personnel who attended that first grand prix relate horrors stories about their acceptance in the then-communist state. Nothing China throws at the F1 circus even begins to compare with the conditions endured by those intrepid folk 25 years ago, and it was only when democracy hit Hungary in 1990 that F1 could appreciate the pleasures offered by this quaint and charming eastern European country.
The locals are ultra-friendly, while living standards have improved in leaps and bounds despite Hungary having been one of the EU countries hardest hit by the credit crisis. When Felipe Massa last year suffered that horrific accident after being stunned by a wayward spring off Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn the Hungarians went out of their way to ensure the Brazilian received the best possible care.
The first few hours after his accident were absolutely critical to his recovery, and his ability to race at the circuit on Sunday is as much a credit to the Hungarian medical team as it is to specialists in Brazil and Florida and the FIA’s safety standards.
Felipe says thanks
On Thursday, in appreciation of their efforts, Felipe personally thanked the entire team in Budapest, and presented the doctors with a signed crash helmet of the type worn by him a year ago. Today, Friday, he set the fourth-fastest time in the second session, less than a second adrift of Vettel.
‘It was definitely good yesterday to go to the medical centre and meet the people who took care of me immediately after the accident, and it was equally emotional to have dinner with the surgeon who operated on me at Budapest’s AEK hospital: I wish to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone for what they did for me one year ago; they are really extraordinary people,’ said the driver who remains one the friendliest and most approachable of the current crop despite his impressive success record.
True, Felipe placed only 12th in the morning, but the circuit is notoriously fickle on account of its location in a dusty rural area, compounded by seeing little action between grands prix. Thus opening session times mean very little in the overall scheme of things. Expected overnight rain (and possibly on Saturday) will hardly help matters, for a ‘rubbered’ in racing line is required for maximum performance.
With an average speed of below 200 km/h the Hungaroring ranks as second-slowest circuit after Monaco, and, in fact, (performance) comparisons between the two are often drawn despite the overall experiences being utterly different in every respect. Like Monaco, this shortish, undulating 14-turn (8 right, 6 left) circuit is mainly stop-start, and requires high downforce settings; like the streets of the principality the surface is treacherous when wet – which could be the case on Sunday – and constantly evolves.
Given that RBR were one-three on the grid in Monaco, it was perhaps no surprise to see the team dominating proceedings here in similar fashion, particularly as the Milton Keynes-based outfit seems way ahead of the curve in the development race. In Hockenheim a week ago a furore broke about flexible front wings, but his was overshadowed by the team orders controversy (analysed in depth elsewhere within these pages), so discussion spilt over to Hungary despite (because of?) their being declared legal.
I appears both RBR and Ferrari have discovered some means of enabling the nose of their cars to droop at speed, bringing the entire front wing assembly around 25 millimetres to the ground. While FIA tests only checking deflection at the wings’ extremities through applying downward forces of 50 kilograms to the ends of the wings (despite downforce being around four times that at speed), the noses on the Red Bulls and Ferraris seem to flex forward and downwards at speed. Legal as measured, me lord, if possibly not quite within the spirit...
Ways and means...
The second session did not see RBR dominate to the same degree, but, still, half a second over Alonso was enough for Vettel to downplay the advantage of the blue cars. ‘I think this morning we know what happened and the gaps were very big, but this afternoon was much more like it,’ he said afterwards.
‘I think the Ferraris will be very close and I think in the long run if you look at the pace was very similar, so again it looks tight, and McLaren are likely to come back for Saturday. So you never know.
‘This morning was maybe not a clear picture, but this afternoon was much more like it, much tighter and the Ferraris seemed very quick again, not just on short run but also on longer run. I think they will be very quick again tomorrow as well.’
Well, maybe, but Alonso, fresh from his manipulated win in Germany and thus out to prove he is a race winner on merit, sure was trying. ‘I hope we can stay close to our main rivals, who seemed very strong today, and are able to fight them in Q3 tomorrow afternoon,’ commented Ferdi’, fifth in the rankings with 123 points, during afternoon “media” scrums.
‘For now, we are still a bit behind by a few tenths, even if we won’t know the truth until qualifying. We certainly need to work on the set-up of the car to improve its performance, especially in the second and third sectors.’ That and getting rubber up to temperature, which could prove crucial after the mandatory stops on Sunday.
It is not often Mark Webber is happy with third-fastest, but Friday seemed one of those days, with the Australian professing to having had a ‘pretty good day’.
‘We got through everything we wanted,’ said the lanky driver, third in the rankings and ahead of Vettel despite an equal score of 136 points on account of Mark’s three: two win ratio so far this year.
‘The car ran faultlessly and the guys did a good job. The track keeps getting quicker and we learned quite a bit today. The Ferraris look quick again, so we’ve got to keep an eye on them – you never know what fuel loads people are running on Friday.’
Chirpy Massa
So to Massa, who looked surprisingly chirpy despite having been ‘advised’ to make way for Alonso in Germany a year to the day after he had his life-threatening crash in Hungary.
During Friday’s FIA conference the Brazilian made no bones about his desire to cap his return to the circuit which almost claimed his life with victory, and, with one of the banes of his 2010 season – namely big steps between tyre compounds – not applying here on account of Bridgestone bringing a one step mix of rubber, namely mediums and supersofts rather than extreme allocations seen at races since Canada, could do so.
‘As has generally been the case this year, we need to work on our performance on the first timed lap: our main rivals manage to set a time quickly while we struggle a bit more. This is vital, especially for qualifying which, at a track like this, is even more critical than usual,’ he urged.
‘In particular, we have to get the front tyres working as well as possible. In terms of race pace, I would say we are pretty good, as was also demonstrated in Hockenheim. Returning to driving at this track was not difficult for me: when you are in the car and you shut the visor, you only think about going quickly.’
After placing just 13th in the morning, Vitaly Petrov, under pressure to perform from Renault after being the only driver to have been out-qualified by his team-mate in every race so far this year, put in a spurt after lunch to end a surprise fifth, 0.209 seconds shy of Massa.
‘It was a good day of practice and I found a good balance with the car,’ commented the Russian. ‘I know this track well and, with updates we have here, the car feels much better. In the morning we did basic set-up work, and in the afternoon I tried new parts, including a new rear wing which has much more downforce.’
Sixth after having effectively been told to shut up by McLaren big boss Ron Dennis after complaining about his car’s (relative) lack of performance, was 2008 champion Lewis Hamilton. Having said the MP4-25 was the only ‘third best car’ out there, the winner of last year’s Hungarian round switched to saying the ‘car is the best I’ve ever driven around here – it felt really great through the corners’…
‘But, even so,’ added Lewis, ‘we’re losing quite a bit of time in the middle sector, and a couple of tenths in the first and third sectors, too. And then, as you start to push harder, in order to close the gap to the guys in front, the car begins to feel like it’s a little bit on the ragged edge.
“I think we’re pretty much getting the best out of the package we have, but there’s still maybe a few tenths to come. So we know we’ve got a lot of work to do: this weekend is really about scoring as many points as we can, and hoping the guys ahead run into trouble,’ said the championship leader, on 157 points.
"Satisfied" Kubica
Next up was Kubica, the Pole expressing himself satisfied with his day’s work at the circuit at which he made his grand prix debut with BMW in 2006. ‘It was a fairly normal Friday for us. We tried to get as much information as we could and we were quite lucky with the weather because I think there was quite a lot of rain close to the track, but we got away with two dry sessions, which was what we needed.’
Following his top ten qualifying result for Williams, rookie Nico Hulkenberg put in another impressive performance to end the day as second-best (of six) German. ‘It was a positive day for us,’ he concluded.
‘We worked efficiently through our programme and got plenty of work done. It looks similar to Hockenheim here in terms of relative pace and hopefully if everything goes well, we’ll be inside the top ten tomorrow.’
Ninth after an unremarkable day was reigning champion Jenson Button (McLaren) , second in the title hunt with 143 points, who pipped seven-time champion Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes by just 0.043 to complete the top ten, the latter for once beating team-mate Nico Rosberg (13th).
Neither Mercedes driver was happy, with Schumacher commenting ‘Today we saw two sessions where neither the long runs nor the single laps were looking particularly good. We are not up to the speed that we normally are on Fridays and unfortunately our car does not look very good here at the moment.’
Nico, who earlier had said that he thought he could end seventh and thus best driver of the fourth-fastest car behind the Red Bulls, Ferrari and McLarens, lamented not getting a clear run on his ‘hot’ laps.
‘The track was unexpectedly fast so we had to do some different things with the set-up just to get a feel for it. My lap time wasn’t particularly representative as I didn’t set a time because of the traffic so I think we look to be in our general position behind the frontrunners at the moment,’ he explained.
Saturday’s qualifying session starts at 14 00.
