Reflecting on Friday at the Hungaroring

Friday at the Hungarian Grand Prix proved to be a frustrating one for the team as we were left to rue technical glitches and balance complaints in the first two hours of running.

With the weather expected to be completely different for qualifying on Saturday, the decision was made to use more soft tyres than would be usual on a Friday, as Dave Robson explained.

“We got through a lot of work today and made some good progress with the tyres,” stated our Head of Vehicle Performance, adding: “With rain forecast for tomorrow, we opted to use 5 new sets of slicks today in order to maximise our preparation for the race.

“We had a solid FP1 with both drivers feeling comfortable with the car and making very similar balance comments.

“In FP2 Alex flat-spotted his main set of Soft tyres before he had a chance to set a lap time and so he finished at the bottom of the timesheet. However, although we were struggling for overall grip today, we know that there is a lot more to come from him.

“Alex also suffered a telemetry failure during his high fuel running and so his session finished early as a precaution. Nicholas had no serious car issues and made good progress on low fuel before successfully completing his high fuel run.

“The outcome of the rest of the weekend will likely be dictated as much by tomorrow’s weather as the car performance and we hope that a wet qualifying will present us with an opportunity at a circuit where overtaking is very difficult.”

Alex Albon was P16 in FP1 with a 1:20.834, but the aforementioned flat spot saw him drop to P20 in FP2, recording a best time of 1:20.615.

Our No23, although frustrated, knows there’s still plenty of time to make progress, saying: “We didn’t really do a proper short run and we had to cut the race run short, so it was not a smooth session today, but anyway we will go into tomorrow fresh.

“It’s likely to be wet, so it’ll be a bit of a reset for everyone and I don’t think today will hurt us too much.”

Like his teammate, Nicholas Latifi found time on his FP1 time in FP2, improving by a second to record a 1:20.488, enough to finish the day in P18.

“Overall it’s been a tricky day with the track conditions and temperature which have probably been the same for everybody,” explained the Canadian, continuing: “We struggled to get the balance dialled in, so there’s still a bit of lap time to extract if we can bring the car a little bit more together.

“There are still a few things on my side to work on. Tomorrow could provide some opportunities with the mixed conditions so hopefully, we can take advantage of that.”

In the support categories, Logan Sargeant qualified P5 in an extremely tight session that saw a tenth of a second separate P2 down to P6. Meanwhile, Roy Nissany will start both races from P21.

Over in Formula 3, Zak O’Sullivan’s qualifying session came to an abrupt end when he was forced to stop with an issue on the main straight, meaning he was a spectator during the final push laps as he fell down the order to P22.

Finally, in the W Series, Jamie Chadwick will have to fight in the race tomorrow if she wants to maintain her 100% record in 2022, putting her Jenner Racing car in P5 on the grid.