It was a positive day for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro here at the Hungaroring circuit in Budapest, with a lot of work completed and signs of being competitive.
In the morning session, the team worked mainly on the evaluation of various new technical solutions for forthcoming races and on a comparison of some aerodynamic configurations.
“I hope we can stay close to our main rivals, who seemed very strong today and be able to fight them in Q3 tomorrow afternoon,” said second placed Alonso. “For now, we are still a bit behind by a few tenths, even if we won’t know the truth until qualifying. We certainly need to work on the set-up of the car to improve its performance, especially in the second and third sectors.”
“Compared to Hockenheim, where the car was well balanced, here we are suffering with a bit too much understeer, but all the same it feels pretty good. We did various aerodynamic tests and, in the end, it seems the car is more competitive without the blown rear wing. Overall, we are happy with how things went today, even if we are well aware that one cannot rely much on Friday’s times.”
“As for McLaren, whom one should not forget lead both championships, we seem to have the upper hand, but so often we have seen them struggle on a Friday before then being very competitive. Tomorrow afternoon, it will be very important to secure a place in the top three because it would be hard to fight for the win starting further back.”
Then, in the afternoon session, the Maranello based squad’s focus switched to finding the best set-up on the F10 and a comparison of the two types of tyre brought here by Bridgestone.
“As has generally been the case this year, we need to work on our performance on the first timed lap: our main rivals manage to set a time quickly while we struggle a bit more. This is vital, especially for qualifying which, at a track like this, is even more critical than usual,” Massa said. “In particular, we have to get the front tyres working as well as possible. In terms of race pace, I would say we are pretty good, as was also demonstrated in Hockenhiem.”
“Overall, we are reasonably pleased with what we have seen today,” said Stefano Domenicali. “The car seems to be competitive, although it has to be said that the Red Bulls were very strong. Now we must prepare as well as possible for qualifying and the race, with the aim of picking up a lot of points, continuing in the same vein as we began in Hockenheim.”
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