22/07/2023
NEWS STORY
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen qualified 10th and 19th respectively for the Hungarian Grand Prix, Round 12 of the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship.
A new format was trialed in qualifying on Saturday, as part of the weekend's 'Alternative Tire Allocation' - reducing the total number of Pirelli tires supplied to each team from 13 sets to 11, with drivers only permitted to use set tire compounds in each knock-out session. Q1 saw the exclusive use of the P Zero White hard tire, Q2 the Yellow medium rubber, then finally the Red soft compound in Q3. The format will next make an appearance at the Italian Grand Prix in September.
Magnussen saw an early lap time deleted in Q1 for exceeding track limits but responded with a faster 1:19.681 before returning to the garage for a new set of hard tires. Magnussen's last timed attempt delivered a 1:19.206 meaning the Dane exited qualifying P19 on the timesheets. Hulkenberg posted laps of 1:19.570 and 1:19.550 on his first set in Q1. The German booked his place in Q2 courtesy of a 1:18.695 on his second set of the hard rubber.
Switching onto the medium compound in Q2, Hulkenberg continued to find pace in his VF-23. An early run produced a 1:18.005 lap before he bettered that with a 1:17.652 to advance into Q3 in P7. The fight for pole position in Q3 saw Hulkenberg bank a 1:17.298 before he produced a faster lap of 1:17.186 on his second set of soft tires to capture P10 on the grid for Sunday's 70-lap race.
Lewis Hamilton steered his Mercedes to a ninth Hungarian Grand Prix pole position (1:16.609), the most by any Formula 1 driver at a single circuit, ahead of Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen (1:16.612), with the McLaren of Lando Norris (1:16.694) completing the top three in qualifying.
Kevin Magnussen: "Just a disappointing qualifying for me, I couldn't find the pace in one lap this week. I think I just can't seem to find the confidence in the car on one lap - on long runs and high fuel in the race it's a different story. Seeing what's in the car, Nico doing Q3, it's of course disappointing not to be able to extract that myself. I feel more confident in the race but then again we as a team have a limitation there too. The tire allocation made no difference for me, it's the same for everybody. We'll just try again tomorrow and see if we can pull something out of the hat."
Nico Hulkenberg: "Happy! All laps were clean and we extracted everything we could out of it. In Q3, unfortunately we were only tenth as we didn't have any more pace. I was a bit concerned in Q1 with the hard tire going into qualifying, I wasn't sure what to expect there, but we managed to survive that. Q2 on the medium was pretty good, and then in Q3 there just wasn't enough pace, but every Q3 for us is positive."
Guenther Steiner, Team Principal: "It was a good FP3 - we ran all our test program with both cars without issues. In qualifying, it was a good result for Nico. Obviously, Kevin is not so happy with his result, but we need to work on him to get him up there as well, it's possible. Nico got the best out of the car, and it's a tough crowd. In Formula 1 these days, anything can happen, it's all over the place but in a good way. In that regard, you never know what will happen tomorrow. We'll get ready knowing our weakness is the long runs, but it's another day, and another fight."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Hungaroring here.