F1 Hungary Test – Day One
Today, it was the start of the final in-season test before the summer break and in this post you can see a roundup of what happened.
Mercedes and Pirelli: F1 Hungary Test – Day One
Even though Valtteri Bottas was on-track today, it wasn’t him doing the run for Mercedes. He was only doing tyre-work for Pirelli.
Mercedes brought along their junior driver – George Russell who completed the programme, bringing home 100 laps for the team with useful data and sitting in 4th place on the time sheets.
Bottas’ testing only lasted for the day – Pirelli are now getting ready for their two-day testing session in Barcelona with the Ferrari team.
RedBull Racing: F1 Hungary Test – Day One
Max Verstappen was behind the wheel of the RB13 who had a delayed start to the session due to a technical issue.
However, once he got out on track he brought back 58 laps and this is what he had to say.
Max Verstappen – “Despite the late start, we managed to get quite a few bits on the car today so that’s a positive.”
“It’s always good to understand where we are and what we can bring and learn for the upcoming races – aside from the issue this morning, we had some updates here and in general everything worked well.”
“This gives us a few new directions to work on for the future and now that we head into the summer break.”
“I’ll be spending some time with family and friends before Spa – we travel so much that it’s always nice to catch up but after that, I’ll be happy to go again – especially Spa where I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of Dutch fans in the grandstands.”
McLaren: F1 Hungary Test – Day One
It was a varied session for the McLaren Honda team with the morning session seeing them focus on shorter runs, running through to rapid set-up changes and aero correlation tests between laps for swift evacuation.
Before lunch, after Stoffel Vandoorne had completed 35 laps, the team then stopped the car out on-track as a precaution to a suspected fluid leak which resulted in red flags.
For the later part of the afternoon, the team then focused on further balance, handling and set-up changed with a variety of short runs on different tyre compounds.
Overall, Vandoorne completed 72 laps and ran with good pace throughout the day.
Stoffel Vandoorne – “It’s actually been a very productive day for us, despite the stoppage.”
“We’ve put some new things on the car to explore throughout the day and I feel that they’ve bee n positive – we’ve definitely moved in the right direction as the day has progressed.”
“It’s good to see that when we bring new parts to the track, they respond and improve the performance of the car. Obviously this is testing and it doesn’t mean a lot but it does give us useful data that we can analyse and help in our learning.”
“A test after a race weekend is always very valuable for the team and this provides a good opportunity to validate things that did or didn’t go well and to introduce new parts that might have been too much of a risk in the season.”
“I hope we can get more useful data before the team starts a well-deserved summer break.”
Photos: F1 Hungary Test – Day One
Testing will continue tomorrow where all eyes will be on Renault as Robert Kubica (photo above) will be driving the 2017 Renault for the first time.
This is widely-considered to be a test as to whether he is capable of making a comeback / return to the sport.
xx
Images –Kym Illman F1 & Formula 1
