2019 Hungarian Grand Prix - Practice Sessions

Budapest, August 2, 2019

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM FP1 AND FP2

• Although the Hungarian Grand Prix is normally associated with warm weather, today’s conditions were mixed, with intermittent light rain in both sessions that limited on-track running, as well as a brief red flag in FP2.
• All the nominated tyres for Hungary were used at various points during the day, with the exception of the Cinturato Blue full wet tyre.
• The quickest FP1 time was faster than the equivalent from last year, but the 2018 benchmark in FP2 wasn’t beaten due to the weather. The top three times in FP2 were set early in the afternoon session with the three different slick tyres: soft, medium and hard, in that order.
• The fastest overall time of the day was set by Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton in this morning’s FP1, using the soft.
• Track temperatures were down to under 30 degrees centigrade by the end of FP2, with ambient temperatures in the region of 24 degrees.
• On a short circuit such as the Hungaroring, the difference between the compounds is never especially big. There’s a very approximate difference of around 0.7 seconds between soft and medium, with an estimated gap of 0.5 seconds between medium and hard. However, the limited running made it hard to get an accurate read.

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF F1 AND CAR RACING

“Today it’s difficult to draw too many detailed conclusions about the weekend ahead, especially when conditions have been so mixed. Except at the start of the session, in FP2 the conditions were a bit too wet for slicks but a bit too dry for intermediates: one reason why there was comparatively limited running. The drivers will have an extra set of Cinturato Green intermediate tyres for tomorrow, after the wet running today, and they were able to learn something about the intermediates later in FP2. Nonetheless, we also saw some quicker runs in the morning on slick tyres as well as longer race runs, acquiring data that should contribute to a more accurate picture tomorrow as we head into qualifying. The teams were additionally able to gather some ideas about crossover points from slicks to inters and vice versa. All three slick tyres were used at various points today, and the indications so far suggest that all three will also be useful race tyres, depending of course on the weather – which still holds a question mark for the rest of the weekend.”