Very busy day for Sauber at Hungaroring
In the first free practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix Pedro de la Rosa and Kamui Kobayashi were both quite happy with the balance of their cars. In the afternoon the team tried several set-up changes without making any immediate progress. Now it is time to analyse the data. The race on Sunday at the Hungaroring will be the 300th Grand Prix entered by Peter Sauber’s team.
Pedro de la Rosa: C29.04 / Ferrari 056 1st Practice: 6th / 1:22.764 (24 laps) 2nd Practice: 11th / 1:21.809 min (39 laps) “For me it was a positive and productive day. My car is pretty good on this low speed circuit, which means all the improvements the team introduced during the recent races are also paying off on this type of track. I think we are looking strong here and there is more to come: For the time being my car tends to understeer, the front is a bit lazy, but I’m sure this can be solved by changing the set-up.”
Kamui Kobayashi: C29.02 / Ferrari 056 1st Practice: 14th / 1:23.327 min (23 laps) 2nd Practice: 14th / 1:22.212 min (44 laps) “We have done a lot of set-up work today and my car is getting better, but I am not happy yet. The track is quite bumpy and I have to fight understeer as well as oversteer. But my main problem is a lack of grip. I don’t really know yet where this comes from, but the data will tell us and we are now going to look at it.”
James Key, Technical Director: “It’s been a very busy day. In the morning we tested some aerodynamic parts on both cars, which provided us with very useful data in view of future developments. The morning was okay for both drivers as the cars ran fine. The second session was more of a standard programme, looking at the set-up of the cars and the tyres. The biggest problems today were consistency and traffic. The grip levels were quite tricky and made it difficult to put together a good lap, particularly on the harder tyre, but also with the soft compound it was not easy to produce consistent lap times. That’s definitely something we have to look into this evening. We’ve got work to do tonight, and I don’t think it’s straight forward, but Pedro being 11th on a compromised lap wasn’t so bad. For Kamui we need to work on the rear end of his car to make it more stable. I think it’s still open as to what will happen tomorrow.”
