22/07/2023
NEWS STORY
Daniel Ricciardo: "The main thing is for me to get behind the wheel, feel good again and be comfortable in the car and the team.
"I feel like I've made good progress over the past two days and learnt relatively quickly, and as long as we keep progressing from here, I'll be happy. It hasn't been the easiest weekend to come in, with the wet conditions we had yesterday and the different tyre allocations, but I was happy to be competitive in qualifying. I don't expect the racing to feel too foreign, I only took half a year off, so tomorrow will be fun, and of course, if there are gaps, I'll see what the car can do."
Yuki Tsunoda: "Today was difficult. Being knocked out of Q1 isn't great; it's tough and I'm disappointed. I couldn't improve and missed out on Q2, not finishing in the position I wanted to, and it's a shame. The pace was there, and I feel we have made a step forward with the new rear wing, I just couldn't put it together and maximise my performance. It's good learning for the future, but I'm very frustrated I lost the opportunity to maximise my pace. The different tyre allocation we had for qualifying this week was fun yet challenging, because it made the practice sessions more difficult, but it doesn't affect the race tomorrow. From what we saw in practice, the race pace seems ok, so hopefully I can maximise on that and gain as many positions as possible."
Claudio Balestri (Chief Engineer – Vehicle Performance): "Based on the data collected yesterday, and even with some interruptions during FP1, we tried to optimise our package, taking into consideration the different track conditions expected today. During the first half of FP3, we did some high fuel runs to optimise the car for the race by completing a long run simulation. In the second half of the session, we focused on quali preparation, and considering the new format, we decided to optimise our car, especially on the hard and medium tyre compounds, which are the mandatory ones for Q1 and Q2. It was a bit more difficult to understand our level of competitiveness due to the very different tyre usage across the pitlane, with many teams using soft tyres and only a few deciding to use the hard compound. Our strategy paid off in the end and in Q1 we were able to set competitive lap times on the hard compound. However, while Yuki, unfortunately, struggled to improve in his last attempt in Q1, Daniel made it into Q2. Today we were simply not fast enough to enter Q3. We now shift our attention to preparing for the race tomorrow, which will not be an easy one, but we will do our best to get back into the points."
Check out our Saturday gallery from the Hungaroring here.