22/07/2016
NEWS STORY
Sahara Force India enjoyed a productive day of practice in Budapest as Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Perez clocked up a combined total of 137 laps in preparation for Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.
Nico Hulkenberg: "It's been a fairly standard Friday, with no big surprises. The new track surface is a big difference compared to previous years. The bumps that were one of the features of this track are gone and the new tarmac is really grippy. I think times are already a couple of seconds faster than they used to be. The initial feeling with the car is pretty good - of course, there are the usual tweaks we have to make overnight, but by looking at both our short and long run pace, we seem to be in good shape."
Sergio Perez: "It's been a very useful first day of work, even though the red flag in FP2 came at the worst possible moment and reduced our short run work. We made quite a few changes on the car between runs, so there will be a lot of data to analyse to come up with the best set-up for both qualifying and the race. We managed to get a lot of information on our long runs and this should be good for the race. The new track surface is a lot smoother and there is a lot of grip so it's a big improvement compared with last year."
Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal: "A busy day on track with each car completing a race distance to give us plenty of data for the race. Track temperatures were pretty hot - in the high forties - but we could see even hotter temperatures over the weekend. We worked through our usual tyre programmes and carried out some experimentation with test items split between the two cars - tonight we will decide on the best route to take going forward. The drivers appear generally happy with the car balance and the focus for tomorrow morning will be firmly on qualifying performance because grid position is especially important for this event given the tight layout of the track."
Check out our Friday gallery, here.