Lewis Hamilton, P1 - 1:22.554, 3rd; P2 - 1:22.079, 1st
“Firstly, I love driving here: it’s quite a complex circuit, very technical, lots of bumps and you need a good rhythm. It’s definitely in my top five tracks on the calendar. We’ve refined the improvements we had at the Nurburgring and they seem to be working, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do to beat the Red Bulls particularly. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to be able to push the car - I’m happier with it than I’ve been all season. The MP4-24 is lacking pace over the bumps and at the exits of corners: unlike the Red Bulls and the Brawns, we’re just not able to get the power down as early as them. It’s the speed out of the corners onto the straights where we lose out. Still, the guys at the factory have done an incredible job; I’m looking forward to seeing them next week, just to express how thankful I am for all the hard work they’ve been doing. In qualifying the front row would be beautiful but, to be honest, I’m just aiming to get into Q3. The car is much more competitive - we’ve come from 2.5s off but we’re still about four to five tenths off the leaders, so we’ve got to keep working to make that up before we can start thinking about winning.”
Heikki Kovalainen, P1 - 1:22.278, 1st; P2 - 1:22.126, 2nd
“I’ve got the full upgrade package that Lewis raced at the Nurburgring and the car now feels much better to drive. We’ve got a new floor, new front wing, updated bodywork and some small changes to the suspension. It’s a big package - and I know how hard the team has worked to get everything here. There are still components arriving at the circuit today! The grip level is so much higher now. Stability under braking is much better, and the guys have done a fantastic job to improve the balance at the rear. We still have to keep working hard to make further improvements - but this is a great starting point. I still think we need to look at the data and analyse the strength of the opposition. Of course, it would be fantastic to carry this over into qualifying and the race, but we need to be realistic: I’m sure tomorrow morning will give us a much clearer idea of the position of the Brawns and the Red Bulls. But after today’s performance, I’ll definitely be going for it.”
Nico Rosberg, P1 - 1:22.337, 2nd; P2 - 1:22.154, 3rd
“We have made some good progress today in the sessions, but I don’t yet feel completely happy in the car and I think we can find some more improvement tomorrow. The tyres will be quite interesting to work out as although they are quite close together, the option at the end of a run is obviously a bit slower than the prime. We will have to analyse carefully which way we go in the race and I think that the answer might not be too obvious. We also spent some time testing the new aero parts we have here.”
Mark Webber, P1 - 1:22.615, 4th; P2 - 1:22.369, 4th
“We’ve had a good day so far. It’s normal for Budapest to be pretty warm, so we’ve experienced the normal characteristics and the problems that Budapest throws at the engineers and drivers. The car seems to be going okay at the moment - we’ll see what fuel loads people are running as usual tomorrow and on Sunday. We’ve got a bit of work to do with our car but, in general, it’s been a reasonably positive day, with the exception of stopping towards the end of the second session with a hydraulic problem.”
Kazuki Nakajima, P1 - 1:22.619, 5th; P2 - 1:22.426, 5th
“It was a good session today. We recorded some good long runs and although our short runs were not quite as good, if we can fix this by working with the data, we will be looking good for tomorrow.”
Sebastian Vettel, P1 - 1:23.283, 15th; P2 - 1:22.550, 6th
“A hot, hot Friday, obviously the sun is out in Hungary, which makes it hot in the car, but it’s okay. Overall I think we are still struggling to find the balance - I’m not yet 100 percent happy, so we need to look into it carefully overnight to see where we are. Hopefully we can make a step forward tomorrow and then it will be all about qualifying as usual. I think it’s much closer here than at previous races, other teams are very competitive, so we will see!”
Rubens Barrichello, P1 - 1:23.209, 13th; P2 - 1:22.641, 7th
“Our programme today was to work with the two tyre compounds to fully understand their working range and the impact on the set-up and balance of the car. Most of my day was focused on evaluating the prime tyre which proved not have a great deal of grip so it was important to establish some set-up assumptions. We then tried the option tyre later this afternoon which seemed to be quicker. Overall I’m pretty happy with our progress today.”
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