Hungarian GP: Brawn GP Friday practice report

The Brawn GP team began its preparations for the Hungarian Grand Prix, Round Ten of the 2009 Formula One season, at the Hungaroring just outside Budapest today.

In hot and sunny conditions, Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button completed a busy Friday testing programme with their Brawn-Mercedes cars which feature a number of aerodynamic upgrades this weekend. In addition to running the new aero parts on track for the first time, the pair focused on an evaluation of the two Bridgestone Potenza tyres for this race, the soft compound prime tyre and the super soft option tyre.

Rubens and Jenson completed 129 laps of the 4.381km Hungaroring during today's two sessions, successfully working through their planned programmes and collecting valuable data to give the team a good start going into the weekend.

RUBENS BARRICHELLO
"Our programme today was to work with the two tyre compounds to fully understand their working range and the impact on the set-up and balance of the car. Most of my day was focused on evaluating the prime tyre which proved not have a great deal of grip so it was important to establish some set-up assumptions. We then tried the option tyre later this afternoon which seemed to be quicker. Overall I'm pretty happy with our progress today."

JENSON BUTTON
"It's been a much better Friday for us than at the last couple of races. Obviously the temperatures are higher here which works in our favour and we have some good aerodynamic updates to the car for this race. We achieved a lot of important work today with the tyres and whilst we have some way to go to get them working at their optimum, it's a good start to the weekend."

ROSS BRAWN
"A productive day for us today and we're pleased with the amount of set-up work that we have been able to achieve over the two sessions. The initial feedback from the performance improvements that we've brought to this race looks positive and both Rubens and Jenson were happy with the progress made. The temperatures were pretty much as we expected with the hot and sunny conditions enabling us to make reasonable use of the tyres and develop our understanding of their performance characteristics. We will now look through the data this evening to ensure we are ready for qualifying, which is crucial here as there are limited overtaking opportunities, but overall a positive start to our weekend."

-credit: brawn gp