Hungarian Grand Prix: Practice Recap

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team drivers Ollie Bearman and Esteban Ocon ran baseline stints on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium and Red soft tires to start the weekend’s proceedings in FP1. The switch to the softer compound delivered the fastest laps in practice with Bearman earning P6 clocking a 1:16.878, while Ocon’s quickest run – a 1:17.004, landed P12 on the timesheets. Both drivers returned to the mediums for high-fuel laps to close out the session.

Bearman and Ocon started FP2, held late afternoon, sampling the White hard tire for some baseline running. Switching to fresh sets of the soft rubber for quali sims, lap times dropped with Bearman producing a fastest run of 1:16.567 – to place the British rookie P11. Ocon’s best lap, a 1:16.704, put the Frenchman and former Hungarian Grand Prix race winner in P13. High-fuel runs once again wrapped up the day, with Bearman staying on softs while Ocon returned to the hard compound.

MoneyGram Haas F1 Team ran a total of 108 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 – 53 by Bearman with 55 from Ocon.

Ollie Bearman:

“FP1 went well and we had a clean session. The car felt good from lap one, which is always a good way to start your weekend. I had a lot of confidence in every lap I did and it was building up, the car was feeling amazing. It was similar in the car in FP2 but it was a much messier session – I had lots of traffic, and it was tough to get rhythm in the session. I managed to put an okay lap together but there is a lot more pace in the car, so hopefully with a cleaner session tomorrow and a good qualifying, we can be up there.”

Esteban Ocon:

“In FP1, we had a decent car but we didn’t optimize the lap perfectly, there was a bit more in it. In FP2, I think we took a little step back as it wasn’t as clean a session and the car felt a little bit more difficult to drive. It didn’t exactly have the right balance and corners, so we’ll work hard tonight to fix that and get more performance out of tomorrow. In one tenth, there’s like six positions in it, so it all makes a huge difference. We need to put it all together.”  

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“We had contrasting sessions, with FP1 being really good but not executing FP2 very well. We can see the car is quick, but we didn’t get the most out of it, and we need to come away from this weekend maximizing our potential. From Silverstone, the fantastic work from the team at the factory has given us a very competitive car. At three different circuits now – Silverstone, Spa and Budapest – the car has been competitive, which is amazing, and it’s up to us to make use of it. We need to refocus tonight and look at what we didn’t do so well today and get it right for FP3. Overtaking is difficult at the Hungaroring, so we need solid preparation and a good qualifying.”