Mixed emotions at Ferrari on Hungarian Friday
It was a day of mixed emotions for the Scuderia Ferrari at the Hungaroring in Budapest. Kimi Raikkonen was not completely satisfied with the handling of his F2007, but Felipe Massa was happy with the first day of the Hungarian GP weekend.
Kimi Raikkonen: "I am not very happy with the handling of my car in these two sessions and obviously we have a lot to do in order to improve. But this is only Friday and there is no point in making a drama out of it as far as qualifying and the race are concerned. I wasn't able to get a really clear picture of the performance of the two types of tyre, especially on the first lap, firstly because of traffic and secondly because of that quick short shower."
Felipe Massa: "Overall, I am happy with the day. In the final series of laps I could have done a good time but there was a yellow flag and I had to slow. It's hard to say at this stage of the weekend if we are faster or slower than our closest rivals, but we are definitely competitive. We worked a lot on the set-up and towards the end of the day we found some good solutions. There is still a slight unknown as far as tyre performance is concerned, especially on the softer ones over a long run, while the harder ones however are more consistent."
Luca Baldisserri: "The way these three hours of free practice went revealed a slight difficulty on our part when it came to finding the right balance for the car, especially on Kimi's. We picked up a lot of data and we will have to analyse it very carefully to improve the situation for qualifying and the race. On top of this comes uncertainty over the weather and the influence that could have in terms of set-up, especially for qualifying which is so important. Therefore, it is easy to see why it is really difficult to make predictions for the rest of the weekend. The handling of the two types of tyre we have available is rather unusual so far: we have a big difference in terms of consistency of performance, while on the first lap the results are very similar."
Free practice - First session
F. Massa: 2nd 1.22.519 18 laps chassis 260
K. Raikkonen: 3rd 1.22.540 21 laps chassis 262
Weather: air temperature 27/28 °C, track temperature 35/38°C, clear skies.
Free Practice - Second session
K. Raikkonen: 6th 1.21.589 29 laps chassis 262
F. Massa: 7th 1.21.620 29 laps chassis 260
Weather: air 30/28 °C, track 40/39 °C, variable, brief rain shower.
