Sunshine After The Rain - Hungarian Gp, Friday 27 July 2012

Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean took to the Hungaroring circuit today for the first practice sessions ahead of Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix. With a wonderfully warm morning and marvellously mixed conditions in the afternoon, the team assessed a number of aerodynamic developments.

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director - Technical programme notes :

• Pirelli’s medium compound tyres were used in the morning.
  
• The medium, soft and intermediate compounds were used in the afternoon.
  
• We spent the morning tuning the new aerodynamic device with various improvements after initial running in Hockenheim.
  
• Romain had a normal programme in the morning, and an interrupted afternoon after an off which damaged his bodywork.
  

What we learned today :

• The new aerodynamic system is now working well and will have its race debut in the near future.
  

Kimi Räikkönen, E20-05

Free practice 1 : P8, 1:23.983, 24 laps

Free practice 2 : P2, 1:22.180, 20 laps

Kimi : “It was a normal Friday for me. We did the normal things and tried to make the car as quick as it can be. We were second fastest which was good, and we’ve managed to improve the setup on my car over the last few races so I’ve been pretty happy with it. We’re just making small improvements, but we’re making them all the time and going in the right direction. It’s only Friday, but we’re hoping for another good day tomorrow. ”

Romain Grosjean, E20-04

Free practice 1 : P5, 1:23.633, 24 laps

Free practice 2 : P9, 1:22.922, 12 laps

Romain : “Not the best day we’ve had but not the worst either. The car didn’t feel quite as I like it, similar to how it felt in Hockenheim, which made things a bit tricky. I made a mistake running wide on the exit of turn seven in the second session which meant I touched the wall, so a big apology to the guys for that. On a more positive note we now understand a few things which need improving in terms of setup, so hopefully tomorrow these will make a difference and I’ll have the confidence to push a bit harder and show the true pace of the car.”

James Allison, Technical Director : “We conducted valuable analysis of our latest aerodynamic developments on Kimi’s car this morning which help bring it a step closer to deployment in a race sometime in the future. Romain was uncomfortable with his car today which is something we will try to understand this evening. Kimi was pretty happy overall, even this morning when we weren’t running the native downforce settings for this circuit. With the Hungary setup in the afternoon, Kimi was comfortable, quick, and happy with both specifications of dry tyre. Whilst we haven’t conducted our usual long runs today it looks like both compounds should be reasonable race tyres.”