30/07/2022
NEWS STORY
Haas F1 Team drivers Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher qualified 13th and 15th respectively for the Hungarian Grand Prix, Round 13 of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship.
While a wet final practice was meant to be a precursor to qualifying on Saturday, overhead conditions cleared up by the start of Q1 and a cloudy, but ultimately dry session meant weather would not be a factor in determining the grid for Sunday's 70-lap race. Q1 proved straightforward for both Haas F1 entries on the Pirelli P Zero Red soft tires - Magnussen advancing into Q2 running the upgraded package on his VF-22. The Dane set a best lap of 1:18.993 for P12. Schumacher advanced with his fastest lap of 1:19.164 securing P14 at the checkered.
Q2 started with a short run on scrubbed softs for both Magnussen and Schumacher. A return to the garage and a switch onto brand new soft tires produced each driver's fastest laps. Magnussen delivered a best effort of 1:18.825 to finish his qualifying session in P13. Schumacher nailed his fastest time on his final lap in Q2 - the German clocking a 1:19.202 for P15.
Kevin Magnussen: "You always want to make Q3 and it wasn't one of our best qualifying sessions but it seems this weekend we've been a little bit less competitive. There's a lot of work going into it but it's one of those things that will take time to extract the most out of it. From P13, I think you can fight for points. The pace looked alright on the long run, certainly the car felt good in FP2 with high-fuel, if anything a little bit better than low-fuel. We'll take what we can tomorrow and go and have some fun."
Mick Schumacher: "It was tougher than what I would've hoped for. It was quite a chaotic sequence of laps but on the other hand it's qualifying, and you've got to try some stuff, and with the upgrade package the gap was a bit bigger than what we wanted it to be. Our car isn't bad, we still have the opportunity to go forwards and how far forwards is the question. If there's a race from start to finish with no safety cars, maybe it will be a bit difficult to overtake, but we'll give it a shot."
Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: "It was a medium qualifying session today. In FP3 with the rain, it was neither here nor there, so no conclusion can be taken from there. In qualifying, it wasn't perfect but still if we have good starts like we had in France, we can still go for points. We got out of Q1 pretty well, but we just didn't have the speed to get into Q3. We're focused now on tomorrow, we'll hopefully get a good start as we normally do and try to put ourselves in the position to score points. We're here to fight and tomorrow that's what we'll be doing."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Hungaroring here.