The Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One Team enjoyed a trouble-free opening day of the Hungarian Grand Prix today. Sakon Yamamoto, making his team debut, and Adrian Sutil completed more than 500km in total over the two free practice sessions at the 4.4km Hungaroring.
Sakon completed his first laps in the Spyker F8-VII in the morning session. The Japanese driver put in 30 laps, the most of any driver, in the first session and a further 29 laps in the second as he familiarised himself with the car.
Adrian Sutil similarly had a productive opening day. Making his first appearance at the Hungaroring, the German concentrated on learning the circuit and evaluating the super soft and soft Bridgestone tyre options available for this weekend’s race.
Adrian Sutil (car 20)
‘It was a normal day today with no big problems. We tried the two different tyre options here, but the problem is that the option tyre is very soft and goes off very quickly. But in general the car balance felt good, and I think the day went pretty well. ‘
Sakon Yamamoto (car 21)
‘As today was the first time I had driven a Spyker car, in the morning we spent time checking the car and my position. The final lap time was quite bad we know, but we worked on this in the later session. For the afternoon our programme was mainly getting familiar with the car and it’s a shame we couldn’t use the softer tyres to better effect. When I was on them I had traffic and then a yellow flag, which was bad luck, but we have good preparation for tomorrow and will keep working to have another good drive. ‘
Mike Gascoyne, chief technical officer
‘With both drivers not having driven here before, today was all about acclimatising to the track. As always in Hungary, the green first day track conditions and tyre graining dominate, but overall both drivers didn’t make any mistakes and got a lot of laps in to familiarise themselves with the track. Tomorrow we need to work on the finer set-up of the car, but today was pretty much a trouble-free day. ’
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