Born Lewis Hamilton born Max Verstappen, ma Valtteri Bottas. His best time was at the end of free practice 2 of the Hungarian GP, the eleventh round of the 2021 World Championship. The Finn from Mercedes finished ahead of his teammate and the Dutchman, with the Ferraris further back than expected: Leclerc finished 11th, Sainz 12th.
Great tour of Valtteri
The best time trial of the day was the1’17″012 scored by Mercedes number 77, with Bottas faster than Hamilton by only 27 thousandths. Verstappen instead he stopped at 0 “298, with Max not happy with his car: at first he complained about a dancer rear (oversteer), then put on the soft for the qualifying simulation he felt a lot of understeer, and finally, switched to the simulation of Race pace with the average, he again complained of lack of grip at the rear, a sign that in terms of balance there is work to be done at Red Bull. In addition to Lewis and Max, only two riders managed to stay under one second behind. : a great Ocon took home the 4th time at 0 “747, while Perez finished in fifth position with a gap of 812 thousandths. Behind the Mexican was Gasly, then Alonso, Vettel, Norris and Stroll. Very few laps for Tsunoda, on the track only in the last laps: after the bang in FP1 the team was forced to change almost the entire rear axle and did not have time to send the Japanese on the track in the afternoon.
How hot!
On this Friday there were very high temperatures: at the beginning of the session the air registered 33 ° degrees, the asphalt even 63 °. A torrid heat, but that we will probably not see later in the weekend: at the moment there is a possibility of rain for qualifying and not for the race, but on both days a strong drop in temperatures is expected, an aspect that would certainly affect in the performance of the teams. The thermometer is also important for strategies: in this heat the difference between C4 and C3 was greater than one second, but with about twenty degrees less on the asphalt this difference could be reduced to the advantage of the use of the C3 in Q2 by the fastest riders; at the moment, in fact, starting with the soft tire would mean going towards the two stops in the race with a good chance, while shooting with the average would help in facing the GP with only one pit stop. In this sense, the lowering of temperatures would facilitate the teams to go towards the single stop.
Ferrari in search of performance
Two cars out of the top ten on a track with these characteristics was certainly not what was expected from Ferrari, which will have a lot to analyze on Friday night in Budapest. Both drivers failed to bring home a good performance on the flying lap, making up a gap of 1 “358 in the case of Leclerc and 1” 429 in the case of Sainz. On the race pace, the situation seemed less dramatic, even if it was far from Mercedes, which rode very regularly with a load of petrol, proving to be superior even to Red Bull.
The race steps
As said Mercedes ahead on the race pace, with Hamilton significantly faster than anyone on the medium tire. His average pace was 1’22 “6, almost seven tenths of a second faster than Verstappen on average on a stint of similar duration, with the Englishman also faster than Valtteri Bottas. Max’s difficulties are evident from the the fact that Perez was, albeit slightly, more competitive than him Ferrari, contrary to Mercedes and Red Bull, he chose to ride with the soft, probably aware of not being able to pass the cut from Q2 to Q3 with the medium, and with the C4 the references of Leclerc were not bad, with a low degradation due to being the softest compound. Those who seemed to go well with the red were the Aston Martin, faster than both Ferrari and Ocon. Having said that, let’s specify a few things: these references are taken without knowing the fuel loads and on a day in which traffic dominated, so finding absolute regularity in long runs for the drivers was difficult. In addition, today’s temperatures are unlikely to be on Sunday, so the situation is far from definitive.
Fairly calm FP2 with some surprises at the end. Race sims had some traffic issues (as you would expect here) but Aston Marting looked very good in the race trim in the midfield pack. Mercedes with an advantage over RBR. Ferrari looked okay, not great for now. # F1 #HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/coQedwVeRg
– Toni Sokolov (@ tonisokolov1011) July 30, 2021
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