Wurz hindered by electrical fault

The team opened the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend with a promising free practice today under favourable conditions at the Hungaroring. Working through the standard Friday set-up programme, Nico Rosberg recorded the fourth fastest time of the session and reported a healthy FW29. Alex Wurz’s day was slightly hindered by a minor electrical fault on his car which was quickly identified and resolved.

Nico Rosberg "We are a bit higher up on the time sheet than we usually are on a Friday, which is a positive sign. Tyres are important this weekend and it’s going to be difficult to make the right choice. We worked hard today and discovered some useful things and I think we now have a good idea which set-up direction to take. I am pretty pleased with our progress, obviously we can still improve, but we’re heading in the right direction."

Alex Wurz "I lost some time in the morning due to an electrical problem which meant I couldn’t run through a few of the set-up items I had planned and had to play catch up in the second session. The afternoon was actually quite messy, there was lots of traffic and I was only really happy with my last long run. It felt strong, but I couldn’t get the best out of the car today. I hope to find a good rhythm tomorrow in order to extract the best I can out of qualifying."

Sam Michael, Technical Director "We’ve had a productive Friday, working through our usual schedule of preparations for the race and particularly concentrating on the car’s set-up so we can correctly manage the tyres on Sunday. We didn’t experience any problems with cooling or with the brakes, but we did have an electrical fault on Alex’s car in the morning session. The guys fixed it quickly so fortunately it didn’t impede the programme too much. We’ll now work on our set-up for qualifying tomorrow."