Scuderia Ferrari drivers Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc are both cautiously optimistic about their car’s performance in Hungary.
Sebastian Vettel topped the times during second practice at the Hungaroring, having set a time a quarter of a second faster than Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas. The session wasn’t particularly representative due to reasonably heavy rain affecting it, but Vettel appeared quite comfortable as he splashed his way to the front – helped by seven drivers not setting any times.
“I think this morning was ok. This track should be a bit better for us and let’s hope that’s the case tomorrow, but we won’t know until we hit qualifying.” said Vettel afterwards.
Ferrari haven’t got any new updates for their SF1000 this weekend, and are running the car in the same spec as the Styrian Grand Prix. However, the circuit isn’t a power hungry one, meaning Ferrari do look less lost than they did at the Red Bull Ring. Vettel finished P6 in FP1 in the dry, and said that he feels more competitive than last weekend: “We did more laps than others in the wet, because after the weaknesses we showed last week, we need to understand the car a bit better. We need laps to gain confidence in the car. It’s not a secret that there’s still a lot of homework to do, but overall we seem to be a bit more competitive.”
“The weather looks like being changeable in the next few days, but if it’s dry like Austria, it’ll be ok as we were also good this morning on a dry track. I am looking forward to tomorrow.”
Charles Leclerc wasn’t as comfortable in the wet conditions as Vettel, finishing the day in P10 and over three seconds away from his teammate’s time on the Wets.
In the dry, Leclerc fared much better and was less than 0.2 behind at the chequered flag in FP1.
“Today things went better than we expected.” said Leclerc. “We arrived here with basically the same car we had in Austria but it seems to suit this track better, which is good to see. There are fewer straights here compared to the last race venue and here, we are quick around the corners.
“This afternoon, in the rain, we struggled a bit as we were trying out a few things and I wasn’t very happy as I was lacking a bit of confidence in the wet, but we’ve seen some positive signs this morning.” continued the Ferrari driver. “In my first run on extreme wet tyres I only did two laps, which is not really representative, but looking at Seb’s lap time on the same tyre, he did a great job and there’s probably something positive to take from that. I am really looking forward to tomorrow. Hopefully we can convert these positive signs in free practice into a positive result in quali and in the race but there’s still quite a lot of work to do on my side and I’ll try to be in a good place tomorrow.”
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