Intriguing Opening Day in Budapest

• The final Grand Prix weekend before the summer shutdown got underway on Friday at the Hungaroring.

• It was an intriguing day with the team not troubling the top of the timing screens but with encouragement laying behind those headlines.

• Fred Vesti, the team’s Third Driver, completed his second rookie FP1 session of the season filling in for Kimi Antonelli.

• He did a good job, completing his full programme, and ended the hour P7 with team-mate George Russell P5.

• Kimi was back in the car for FP2 and finished the session P13 having had his Soft tyre lap interrupted by a red flag.

• George was once again P5, with the Ferraris of Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc the class of the field on the single lap.

• The real intrigue was on the long run though with high degradation across the field, with a more competitive picture emerging than on the lower fuel work.

George Russell

It was a strange day out there and I think that was true for everybody up and down the field. The Hungaroring is an amazing track to drive but the resurfacing of the track made things quite challenging today. It was quite bumpy in places, and we were struggling with the ride. It also had an impact on tyre degradation which was higher than expected.

Our single lap pace didn’t look great, but our long run looked more competitive. The Ferraris look very strong though and they will be hard to beat this weekend. We thought that would be the case coming into the weekend and so it’s proved up to this point. They are a good step ahead of everyone so we will have to work hard overnight if we are to close that gap.

Kimi Antonelli

That was a tricky first day here in Budapest and that was likely true for everyone. I sat out FP1 with Fred doing a good job in the car; when I got in the cockpit for FP2, I was struggling with the balance. That was more obvious with our single lap work. I had to abandon my first effort due to the red flag but tried to put a time together once the session resumed. I didn’t finish that lap as I had traffic and then was struggling with the rears locking.

The long run was better, and I think we had the tyres in a better window. We also have lots of data and learnings we can take from today which we will work through overnight. I am looking forward to getting back on track tomorrow. FP3 will be an important hour so we can hopefully get the car in a better place and try and get ourselves in the fight for pole position. We know it won’t be easy with the gap we saw today but we will give it our best.

Fred Vesti

It was great to be back in the W17 having driven the car last in Barcelona. It was a positive session on my side. I felt comfortable in the car, worked through our programme and completed all our work. I felt there was more time to come on the single lap but that is obviously not our key focus. The more important thing is that we learnt a lot and that will be useful both for our work this weekend but also for correlation with the simulator and wind tunnel at the factory back in Brackley.

I’m now looking forward to helping George, Kimi, and the team over the rest of the weekend here in Hungary. We’ve got work to do to get ourselves in the fight for victory and will be putting in the effort to do that. After that, we will be back in the simulator next week to connect our work from here at the track with what we are doing back there.

Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director

Fred had a really strong second outing in the W17 today. It's difficult going months without driving the actual car to suddenly being expected to perform with just a few laps to get into it but P7 overall was a very solid result.

It was not a straightforward day today though. We didn't have the car in the right window to start FP1. The rear grip was poor and that issue was getting worse as the lap went on. We took a wrong step on our first attempt to reposition the car balance but found a bit of a direction for the long run towards the end of the session.

Going into FP2, we made some rather large changes to the mechanical setup and whilst we still had too much front end, with successive adjustments we managed to get it in a better window. Similarly to FP1, the long run looked good which is encouraging, but we've clearly got to find some pace on the single lap. We've already started work on that; it's probably been our toughest Friday of the year for low fuel pace but we've managed to get the W17 working well in that regard at all other tracks so hopefully we can manage that tomorrow.

FP1 Result

FP2 Result