Mercedes complete 114 laps on Friday
Mercedes GP drivers Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher completed the first two practice sessions for the Hungarian Grand Prix today at the Hungaroring circuit just outside of Budapest. They amassed a total of 114 laps around the twisty circuit while evaluating both Pirelli tyre compounds for the weekend.
Nico Rosberg, MGP W02 / 07:
FP1: 22 laps, 1:24.250, P7
FP2: 36 laps, 1:22.121, P7
"This circuit is really challenging, and it's very satisfying when you get your laps together cleanly around here. We had two decent sessions and the short and the long runs on the super softs were reasonable. However there is still a lot of work to do to improve our package for qualifying and look at how to manage the tyre degradation. It's interesting to see how the top six positions are changing from race to race, and we'll keep pushing to get even closer to, and maybe into, that group."
Michael Schumacher, MGP W02 / 09:
FP1: 20 laps, 1:24.369, P8
FP2: 36 laps, 1:22.440, P8
"Coming to the second race of a back-to-back series means that you are not able to do a great deal to the car between the two weekends so the practice sessions today went pretty much according to our expectations. We do have the developments from the last couple of races to work with but they obviously do not mean we can make up some positions. We will certainly try to make the best of what we have in our hands for qualifying tomorrow and the race on Sunday."
Ross Brawn, Team Principal:
"We had two reasonable sessions today with a lot of mileage achieved on both cars. It's clear that the tyres are degrading a fair amount with the track in its current state so we have gathered lots of good information on this to work with overnight. Having such a short time between this race and Germany last weekend, there are no further major developments on the car so we are focusing on getting the best from our recent upgrades and improving their performance."
Norbert Haug, Vice-President of Mercedes Motorsport:
"We did a lot of laps today, and only both Ferraris achieved a higher mileage during both sessions amongst the top eight placed cars. We learnt a great deal as well which we now will try to translate into a more consistent performance during the race stints on Sunday. Our single lap performance looks quite decent, taking into account our current level of performance, and the fact that the layout of this track is certainly one of the most challenging ones for the current concept of our car. Tomorrow it will be about optimising what we have learned today in order to be in our best possible form for the race on Sunday."
Weather: Overcast Temperatures: Air: 19-23°C / Track: 21-33°C
