Hungarian GP: Solid Start After Practice in Budapest

Formula 1 is back! After a two-week break since Lewis' historic victory at Silverstone, the team returned to the race track at the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.

However, the second hour of practice got off to a slow start. FP2 had to be interrupted after just over a quarter of an hour because Ferrari's Charles Leclerc spun at Turn 5 and crashed into the barrier.

The barrier was damaged in the process and had to be repaired before the session could be resumed. After 16 minutes the session continued but the team lost valuable time to set up the car, collect data and prepare for the rest of the weekend.

An additional challenge befell in FP2, as the temperatures were about 10°C cooler than in FP1. Accordingly, the drivers had to adjust to the fact that the tyres reacted differently than in the first hour of practice this morning.

Both drivers completed runs on the Soft and Medium tyres. In the end, George and Lewis finished 5th and 7th respectively. The team now has time until FP3 to analyse the information gathered and fine-tune the set-up of the car.

George Russell

It was a very hot day out there today! It wasn’t quite as bad in the car as I was expecting it to be, but I am sure that will change during the race on Sunday. Everyone in the garage is doing a great job working in such challenging conditions, with temperatures upwards of 35°C in there.

We got a lot of laps in today on the long run. That is really useful data for us to go through tonight. It will help dictate our strategy for the rest of the weekend and inform any improvements we can make to the car ahead of tomorrow. The McLarens and Red Bulls looked very quick today, so we know we’ve got some ground to make up. We don’t seem to be quite as competitive in these very hot conditions so that is something we need to understand. We’re excited to see what we can do tomorrow and hopefully we will be in the mix in the top-five.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

We've had a productive day. We've got some development parts on the car and have been using the sessions to understand the effect they are having on the car balance. The track has been very hot, which is giving the tyres a tough time, but it's a good test of whether we've improved our long run performance.

The single lap balance isn't where we need it yet, but we've got time to work on that overnight and in FP3 tomorrow. There's plenty of areas where we can find a bit more pace on both the single lap and long run, so it's encouraging that if we can make a bit of progress, we should be in a strong position for the rest of the weekend.