Hungarian Grand Prix: Practice Recap

Ollie Bearman stepped aside in FP1 as TGR Haas F1 Team reserve driver Ryō Hirakawa participated in his second practice session of the season – building on his first outing in the VF-26 at last month’s Austrian Grand Prix. The Japanese driver sampled both the Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium and Red soft tire compounds during the 60-minute session. A fastest lap of 1:22.001, set on the softs, placed Hirakawa P17 at the checkered flag with 25 laps banked. Ocon ran the same tire compound selection in FP1 with his best lap coming on the softs, a 1:21.051, earning the Frenchman an encouraging P12 on the timesheets.

Bearman returned alongside Ocon in FP2 later in the day, but it was a frustrating solitary practice session for him with a lack of feel in the VF-26. Bearman ran the medium tires with a baseline stint before switching onto fresh softs for a qualifying sim – setting a best lap of 1:20.950 (P15). Ocon’s pace in FP2 remained consistent – running both medium and soft rubber, with his fastest lap time on the softs a 1:20.557 – matching his P12 from FP1. Both drivers concluded Friday’s track action with high-fuel runs through to the checkered flag. 

TGR Haas F1 Team ran a total of 103 laps on Friday across FP1 and FP2 – 50 by Ocon, 28 from Bearman and 25 from Hirakawa.

Ollie Bearman: 

“Today’s been tough, I struggled a lot with the feeling of the car, especially compared to last week. I basically lost all the confidence that I had gained in the last race, so it's been a really tough day. We've got a lot to analyze and improve for tomorrow.”

Esteban Ocon:

“It's been a much better Friday compared to what we had in Spa, the car felt much better. Lately, we've had a lot of difficulties, but we didn't face any today, so it's been very positive. There's a lot of things that we had on the car that we've been waiting a long time for. It's only Friday, so we need to keep that for tomorrow, as we know things can change from one day to another, so we'll try and keep what we have today. Hopefully it'll be a similar level of happiness and performance tomorrow. For me, it's been the best Friday for a long time.”

Ryo Hirakawa:

“It was nice to be back in the car today. I started with some aero testing, but it was less than the previous FP1 session, so I had more laps to run the car on track. The conditions were tricky and the car was a bit difficult to handle. I put some lap times in at the end, but had to abort a couple with traffic, so it was a bit tricky – but I was finally able to do a proper lap to use the tire, so I'm happy about that.”

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal:

“It's been a mixed Friday. Esteban had a very good day, he built it up very well in both FP1 and FP2 and he was happy with the car. It was similar to where he got to in FP2 at Spa, so the car has done a good job and Esteban has gained confidence from the consistency. The issue is on the other side of the garage – when Ollie jumped in, he wasn't happy with the car. Many of the components are the same from Spa, however certain components are different, but the feeling in the car is very different for Ollie. We've had this with Esteban before, going from Friday to Saturday in Spa, so we continue to have this consistency issue that we haven't got to the bottom of. That's the main thing we're tackling.

“You can see from Esteban's performance that this is what he can deliver when he's happy with the car, and it’s the same with Ollie, as we know what he can deliver when he's happy. Overnight our focus is to really pinpoint what's going on with Ollie's car and get that to a good standard tomorrow. On Esteban's car we need to make sure we don't have a repeat from Spa where we lost performance somewhere, but unfortunately we still don't know why. We're trying to be really careful with everything we do with Esteban's car tonight so that when he drives in FP3 tomorrow he gets the car he had today.”