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2004 Hungary GP
Team Quotes - Friday 13 August
Jean Todt: After a break of almost three weeks, Formula 1 is back here in Budapest, with much cooler temperatures than we have experienced in the past at the Hungarian track. Today's programme followed the usual pattern, with the team concentrating on finding the best set-up and on evaluating the two types of tyre available to us. We had a trouble-free day and are satisfied with the work achieved. Last year, we were off the pace at this circuit and, along with Bridgestone, we have worked very hard to improve on that situation. The result of the two hours of free practice indicates that we are on the right track. Our approach to this race is the same as ever, even though we know the fight for the Constructors' title could be decided here in Budapest. We are not putting ourselves under any pressure over this, as a look at the classification shows we are in a pretty comfortable position.
Ross Brawn: Today has given us the first picture of what to expect and I think we can be very competitive here. We did some good long runs to evaluate the tyres. Now we must study the data and listen to the drivers' comments to make our decisions. Rubens flat spotted one set of tyres this afternoon, so did not get as much running as we had hoped for, but I think we still have enough information between the two cars in order to make our decisions. The drivers are fairly happy with the cars. Now we must see how the track develops over the weekend and try and anticipate what kind of track conditions we can expect for Sunday.
Sam Michael (Technical Director, WilliamsF1): We have gone through our normal programme with evaluation of tyres and brakes. The track was lot cleaner than in previous years due to the new vacuum cleaner used, but still low grip to start with. We also concentrated on the start procedure with both drivers. In conclusion, we have had a good first day here and all the new parts we have brought to the car are working well. Although it is always a bit risky to bring new parts straight to a race, we have had a lot of confidence in the wind tunnel correlation to the track which enables us to do this.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): The first day of practice with the modified car ran positively smoothly and we made good use of our time. Now it is important that we also manage to set up the car during the 90 minutes of tomorrow morning’s practice sessions. Also the improvement we have made during the shakedown in Silverstone in order to improve our starting procedure showed itself to work well today.
West McLaren Mercedes driver Kimi Raikkonen emerged fastest overall
following today's two practice sessions for Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix
with a time of 1.20.884. Team mate David Coulthard's time of 1:21.203 puts
him fourth overall.
Ron Dennis: "With the Hungaroring not hosting many motorsports events it's inevitable
that the first day's practice sees the lap times steadily decrease as the
track gets cleaner and cleaner. This complicates the tyre choice process
for both the engineers and the drivers. However our own running has been
encouraging so far, and now that we have made our tyre choice we will
concentrate on further optimising the cars."
Norbert Haug: "Today we have been fast and consistent and are continuously going in the
right direction with the development of the MP4-19B. This circuit makes it
challenging to find the right set-up, so now we have to see what our
efforts are worth in tomorrow's qualifying and the race on Sunday."
In spite of apparently unpromising positions at the end of the second free practice session at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the Mild Seven Renault F1 Team remains confident for the rest of the weekend. During a day devoted to making the necessary tyre choice for Saturday and Sunday, the team completed this task without difficulty, and the rain which had been forecast, and could have disrupted the day, never arrived. As usual, the job at hand will be to improve the handling of the R24: Fernando Alonso spent the day trying to cure an understeering car, while Jarno Trulli found that the two different tyre types had differing effects on the car balance. This fine-tuning of the cars' behaviour will be the team's major task this evening and during tomorrow's practice sessions.
Takuma Sato was the fastest of the Lucky Strike BAR Honda drivers at the Hungaroring today as Round 13 of the 2004 Championship - the Hungarian Grand Prix - got underway in Budapest. Despite a slow start to the day in this morning's session as he waited for track conditions to improve, Takuma found his rhythm this afternoon and ended the day a strong sixth. Jenson struggled slightly more with the lack of grip due to the dusty track conditions and was eighth at the end of the second session. Despite ending the morning third behind the Ferraris, Anthony Davidson was unable to carry this early form through to the second session after hitting the kerb badly and losing track time whilst the team checked his car for any sign of damage.
David Richards, Team Principal: "It is great to get back to the business of racing, and have everyone focused on our results on the track. It was clearly important to maintain the momentum that we had in Hockenheim, and I am really pleased that the team has picked up where they left off three weeks ago. Today we have completed all the tasks we had set out in our programme, all three drivers have had a good day, and we have put ourselves in a strong position for the rest of the weekend. We will see tomorrow exactly where we are versus the competition, but the key thing is that today has dispelled any notion that we might get distracted from the task in hand."
Geoffrey Willis, Technical Director: "As usual the track was very dusty to start with and this showed up with poor rear grip and traction, particularly over the bumps. The circuit improves greatly through the sessions with the result that lap time comparisons are difficult to make. We made some set-up changes over the lunch break, which combined with the improvement in the circuit made the cars considerably better in the second session. We completed all our planned running without problems and generally we are happy with the performance of the car and now have enough information to make our tyre choice for tomorrow."
Shuhei Nakamoto, Engineering Director, Honda Racing Development: "In total our three drivers have completed well over a race distance today so we have got back into things well after the break. The grid is very close and I think the battle for pole will be very tough tomorrow - several drivers seem to have a good chance including Taku and Jenson."
SAUBER PETRONAS drivers Giancarlo Fisichella and Felipe Massa finished 16th and 22nd respectively after today's first practice sessions for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Willy Rampf (Technical Director): "Our main problem today was lack of grip. As a consequence, this was effecting the car balance quite a lot with understeer in the beginning moving to oversteer. Due to the layout of the track with many directional changes any handling problem is magnified. Our main area to improve the performance is therefore to find a more consistent balance.
Dr Mark Gillan, Head of Vehicle Performance: Our sessions on track have been very productive today. All three drivers have managed to complete their programmes with only a couple of minor distractions. Mark’s heat-shields were touching his exhaust so it created some smoke while he was on track. We pulled him in and fixed this without delay. He was then back out for the end of the session and going into his second session he did 33-laps. Again Bjorn and Christian had two good sessions and they both enjoyed being out on track with the R5. Christian went off track once and lost a little time in the second session when he locked heavily. All in all though, I am really pleased with how we have progressed today and the car is looking good on track. The balance is particularly good and we will be working on our tyre choice tonight after gathering a lot of data today. Our focus is now on tomorrow and of course race-set-up for Sunday.
Tsutomu Tomita - Team Principal: "Not a bad opening day for us. Olivier enjoyed two trouble-free sessions and he was able to set some competitive lap times, although he is still not totally happy with the balance of the car. Similarly, Ricardo had small problems with the balance and also made a mistake on his new tyre run. Ryan did a good job on his first time driving in Friday practice, but a water leak meant that he was unable to complete his final two runs on new rubber. The changes we have made over the last two races show that we are moving forward and are in reasonable shape for the rest of the weekend.
James Robinson: It’s great to be back racing - after a three week break you tend to miss it so it’s really good to be back on top of that, we had a good, solid start to our first day. We have two very strong tyre choices from Bridgestone and it’s difficult to know which of them to go with as they both offer great performance. We had no mechanical problems at all and completed a good reliable day’s homework. We also saw a solid days work from Timo, this being his first experience of this unique track.
Minardi Cosworth launched into the first official day of the Hungarian Grand Prix – home race for driver, Zsolt Baumgartner – and made steady progress during Friday's two one-hour sessions. There was a minor hiccough for the Budapest-based driver, when his car coasted into the pits 20 minutes into the morning session, the result of a sensor problem. This was rectified, however, and he was soon back on track. By comparison, team mate, Gianmaria Bruni, had an uninterrupted opening session at the Hungaroring, although in common with Baumgartner and Minardi test driver, Bas Leinders, he found himself grappling with a strongly oversteering chassis, possibly the result of a relatively dirty track surface. Unfortunately, the afternoon session was less successful for him, as his car spun at turn 11 on the fourth lap out of the pits, and became stuck in the gravel. The team took the opportunity of the 'maximum-downforce' nature of the Hungaroring to try several new components on the Minardi Cosworth PS04B today, all of which showed promise. The team looks forward to making further progress tomorrow.
Paul Stoddart, Team Principal: It has been a case of mixed fortunes during the first day of the Hungarian Grand Prix, which is an important event for the team, as it is Zsolt's 'home' race. While the morning session went smoothly enough, Gimmi failed to return to the garage on his first run of the afternoon, and Zsolt, sadly, lost time on what should have been his fastest run of the day due to traffic. Bas, on the other hand, had an excellent day, completing his full technical programme and setting the fastest time of the Minardi drivers. We now look forward to making further progress tomorrow.
Michael Schumacher was consistently quick throughout the day setting the fastest time in the morning with a 1m21.552s and the second fastest time of 1m21.009s in the afternoon’s second session. Fellow Ferrari driver Rubens Barrichello was also up with the pace despite not getting as many laps in as his teammate in the second session. Sauber Petronas and Jordan Ford also showed signs of promise for the coming weekend.
Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager: First day at the Hungaroring and the circuit as expected was very green. We saw some front tyre graining as a consequence of this, especially in first practice, but as the track improved over time, so too did the performance. We expect the track to keep improving over the weekend which will have a positive effect on the levels of grip. As is normal on a Friday, we shall gather together all the data from our teams and decide which of their specifications to recommend but at this stage all four of the Bridgestone specifications could be used – it is really down to the car-tyre balance and individual preferences of the drivers. Overall though, I’m pleased with the first day’s results.
Ross Brawn, Technical Director of Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro: As always, the track changes here enormously over the weekend but the general picture suggests that we should be very competitive. We shall now assess all the data we have. Rubens flat spotted one set of his tyres so didn’t get as much running this afternoon as we’d hoped but we should have enough information between the two cars to make a decision on which specification of Bridgestone tyre each of the drivers would like to use. Both drivers are reasonably happy with the car and we just need to see now how the track develops over the weekend.
Kimi Räikkönen (Team McLaren Mercedes/Michelin) set the fastest lap on the opening day of the Hungarian Grand Prix meeting in Budapest. The Finn lapped in 1m 20.884s during the day's second free practice session and was the only driver to dip below the 1m 21s barrier. All six of Michelin's partner teams had cars in the top 12.
In his first appearance as Toyota's official third driver, Ryan Briscoe was eighth fastest in the first session and 21st in the second. The 22-year-old Australian has taken over from Ricardo Zonta, who has been promoted to the race team in place of Cristiano da Matta. Zonta was 13th and 18th in the two sessions.
Briscoe will be following in the footsteps on his grandfather Frank Lehner, who took part in the 1926 Hungarian GP at Nepliget. Lehner served as riding mechanic in a Daimler-Benz.
Jaguar rookie Christian Klien missed part of the first free practice session after spinning into the Turn Nine gravel trap.
Pierre Dupasquier, Michelin motorsport director: "We have been able to glean lots of valuable data about all three of the dry-weather compounds we have available and that has given us an excellent foundation on which to build for the balance of the weekend.
"Michelin's partners dominated last season's corresponding fixture. That provided us with a good starting point from which to develop tyres for this weekend - and the progress we have made today puts me in a very positive frame of mind."
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