Sauber Hungarian GP Friday Practice Report

Hungaroring

Weather: overcast but dry, 19-22°C air, 21-32°C track

The Sauber F1 Team enjoyed a trouble free and dry first day of practice ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest. With the Sauber C30-Ferrari being virtually unchanged since last Sunday’s race at the Nürburgring, both drivers focused on set-up work and tyre evaluation. Kamui Kobayashi came in 11th in both 90-minutes sessions, Sergio Pérez was 9th and 12th respectively.

Kamui Kobayashi, Sauber F1 Team

Photo by: xpb.cc

Kamui Kobayashi:

Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 01 / Ferrari 056)
1st Practice: 11th / 1:25.113 min (21 laps) / 2nd Practice: 11th / 1:23.030 min (34 laps)

”Although we look better than we did at the Nürburgring, I have the feeling it will be tough to catch the Force India cars, but we want to get in front of them in tomorrow’s qualifying. The balance of my car is not really brilliant yet, but I think we can improve that. For me the soft tyre is the difficult one up to now, so I prefer the super-soft.“

Sergio Pérez:

Sauber C30-Ferrari (Chassis 02 / Ferrari 056)
1st Practice: 9th / 1:24.620 min (24 laps) / 2nd Practice: 12th / 1:23.399 min (37 laps)

Sergio Perez, Sauber F1 Team

Photo by: xpb.cc

“I think we have a better pace here than we had recently at the Nürburgring, and I also believe the ambient temperatures, which are supposed to get higher, will help us to do a better qualifying as it is crucial to get the super-soft tyres to work then. On the long runs I had degradation with both compounds, but with the soft the balance was better compared to the super-soft. For me the soft tyres were also more consistent than the super-soft. I believe it will become quite an interesting weekend for all of us in regard to the tyres.”

James Key, Technical Director:

“It was a reasonably productive day. The weather conditions changed as the day progressed. We expected rain this afternoon, and in the end it was quite the reverse.

We’ve been working pretty much the whole day on the set-up of the cars

James Key

The track temperatures went up to what probably will be more relevant in relation to what we expect tomorrow and on Sunday, so it was a useful session in that respect. We’ve been working pretty much the whole day on the set-up of the cars, and we found several good directions from what we did both in the morning and afternoon. We’ve got some work to do in the middle sector just to get the balance a little bit better. We collected a lot of data, and we just have to continue to work hard over night to make more progress.”