Friday at the Hungaroring crowns Leclerc and Norris in a very compact group!

(Cover picture: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images)

At the end of the two free practice sessions on Friday in Hungary, we find Charles Leclerc's Ferrari in the lead, with a slight gap on Lando Norris' McLaren (+0.015 s) and a tight pack in which it's difficult to decrypt the competitiveness levels.

Whilst FP1 was essentially wiped out by the rain, with many drivers only running out-in laps to avoid returning their sets of Intermediate tyres, the FP2 saw much more action on track. Here's the final classification at the end of the 60 minutes...

🏁 FP2 CLASSIFICATION 🏁

Charles Leclerc takes the top spot to cap off our Friday running 💫#HungarianGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/45VkS6TGTA

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 21, 2023

Ferrari competitive over a flying lap, but can the set up chosen pay off in the race?

Finding Leclerc's SF-23 in first position is undoubtedly positive news for Ferrari fans, although it was already known that the characteristics of the Hungaroring were to play in favor of the single-seater from Maranello. Watching the onboard of the Monegasque's best lap, we observed a fairly "nervous" car over the kerbs in the second sector: I find it likely that this behavior is due to a set up with low ride heights, which causes great instability when attacking the kerbs themselves.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

A set up like this proved to be optimal in view of qualifying, but could be too demanding in view of the 70 laps of the race. In fact, the continuous loss of grip requires extra work by the tyres, which are responsible for the quest for additional mechanical grip. From this point of view, the high temperatures that historically feature the Hungarian GP could be even more decisive in terms of tyre degradation...

"It was a good day, but it's difficult to understand what the real values are: with this new format linked to the tyres, each team followed a different programme, and as far as we are concerned, we completed the work we had planned and the sensations in the car are good, so we are looking with confidence at what we can bring home tomorrow"

Charles Leclerc

McLaren continues its competitive streak even on an unfavorable circuit

Both Lando Norris and Team Principal Andrea Stella, at the end of the last British GP - which the English driver finished with an excellent second place - expressed their reservations about the level of competitiveness that the McLaren MCL60 could offer them on the slow Hungarian track.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

And instead, somewhat surprisingly, the papaya-colored single-seater also proved to be performant on the Hungaroring track... Sure, to compensate Lando Norris's second place we find Oscar Piastri in P19, but in this case it's not a question of lack of competitiveness, but of a different work plan: like the two Mercedes of Hamilton and Russell, Piastri's run plan focused mainly on race pace simulations. We are therefore waiting to reassess the strong Australian driver in tomorrow's FP3, if there's once again no rain...

"I think we're in a good situation, I'm confident and the car is fine... The problem is that if you make a mistake or if a lap is deleted you can find yourself in trouble, moreover on a track where it's not easy to overtake. It's all about not making mistakes and doing a lap without being caught by surprise"

Lando Norris

Why is Red Bull so far behind? A question of "strategy" or poor track adaptation?

Whereas Leclerc and Norris surprised us positively, it's equally surprising to find the World Champion Max Verstappen only in eleventh position, never able to complete one of his laps throughout Friday. In both the runs on Soft and Medium tyres, the Dutchman (and even more so his teammate Perez) struggled to get the tyres up to temperature, setting a laptime 0.593 s away from the top.

Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

“The crash was caused by a mistake from mine, but the mechanics did an amazing job putting the car back together and allowing me to do some laps in FP2. Having some updates to assess, I had to modify my program in FP2, also because with this new format it will be important to find a good balance with all the compounds, given that in qualifying we will have to use them all..."

Sergio Perez

Let's try to investigate further on this lack of performance by the Anglo-Austrian team, making good use of a useful graph that compares the best laptime for each driver to the maximum speed obtained during the same lap. It's therefore clear that, reading the graph, being on the right and at the bottom of it means a perfect situation, where high top speeds do not preclude fast laptimes, while being at the top left is the worst situation: the laptimes are slow, and even on the straight the single-seater is weak...

Best Laptime vs Top Speed - FP2 of the Hungarian GP

Graphs as such are often used by the engineers of the various teams to understand how much the laptimes obtained are the result of set up tradeoffs or the inherent qualities of a single-seater: let's see what we can come up with in the case of Red Bull...

What can be immediately observed is that both Verstappen and Perez set top speeds that aren't astonishing, which is in contrast to what was seen at the beginning of 2023 but perfectly in line with the trend of the last few Grands Prix. The engineers of the Milton Keynes team, for a couple of months now, have preferred a high-downforce setup for the RB19 than the optimal one, in order to protect the rear tyres from overheating. If this can be an advantage over the course of the race stints, on the other hand it's still a weakness in the fights, as well as a not-so-strong point in qualifying... At Red Bull, they can only afford this approach thanks to the relaxation that the RB19's performance allows them.

The same graph, to give you an idea, shows how the Ferrari-powered cars (especially Ferrari itself and Haas) now follow an opposite philosophy, which allows them ominous top speeds.

Analysis of race pace simulations: Alfa Romeo is the surprise from this Friday!

As usual, one of the run plans that give us the most useful information on the competitiveness level of each team is the race pace simulation, to which almost the last half hour of FP2 was dedicated.

Analysis of the race pace simulations - FP2 of the Hungarian GP

We deliberately included the two Alfa Romeos driven by Bottas and Zhou in the graph above, because they surprisingly turned out to be the fastest of the pack... How can we explain this flash of competitiveness?

The two drivers certainly benefited from a work program focused solely on Medium tyres, on which the entire race simulation was performed. In this way they were able to optimize the use of such tyres rather than finding a compromise set up between what was required by the Softs and the Mediums themselves. The downside is that the Swiss team will necessarily have to complete the FP3 only on Soft tyres, assuming they aren't already aware that they will be missing out on the top 10...

There could be some confusion about this, as you might think that the use of Soft tyres is essential in each of the qualifying segments, not just in Q3... Instead, as had already been decided for Imola (apart from the cancellation of the GP), the format provides for a different tyre allocation, which we will focus on in the next paragraph.

Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

Returning to the analysis of the race pace, only in this phase the quality of Verstappen's Red Bull (partially) emerged, although in a short stint. His pace is similar to that of Leclerc and Sainz, while Norris suffered a bit of degradation as the laps of his simulation went by... Finally, we haven't included Mercedes in the graph, which suffered terribly with both drivers in their high fuel runs: the feelings of Fernando Alonso are on the same wavelength, struggling with an Aston Martin that seems a distant relative of the AMR23 admired in the first races of the season.

"It was a day compromised by some complicated testing, so we all had less time to find the right set up. However, we made the most of FP2, especially to simulate the race conditions: I'm fairly happy with our day and our work"

Fernando Alonso

Ricciardo's return: can the driver from Perth be back on his level?

This day of free practice also marked the return of Daniel Ricciardo in Formula 1, at the wheel of the "not-so-quick" Alpha Tauri AT04. A return appreciated by the fans, although I personally have my reservations about how moody the decisions taken by the Red Bull management in terms of drivers appear: Nyck De Vries, after being hired on the basis of a positive race in 2022 at Monza, was sacked after only 10 races in 2023... Are we sure he had the opportunity to fully demonstrate his value?

Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

As for Ricciardo, his "task" will be to stay ahead of Yuki Tsunoda, a driver well blended with the team in which he has been racing for almost 3 years: if he succeeds in this feat, a promotion to Red Bull to replace Sergio Perez is not unimaginable. At the moment, these are the Australian driver's feelings following his first day back at the wheel:

"It felt normal to get back in the car, it was nice... This morning I think I only completed one lap in the dry, and even in that one lap I was already thinking: 'Hey, it's so cool!'. In the afternoon with the first set of Medium tyres it wasn't bad, but then when we used the Softs I realized that there is still everything to learn and put together. Overall though, I think I found a good feeling with the car. There are some aspects of the car that we can continue to evaluate to improve, but nothing extreme. On a personal level, I have room for improvement that I can work on"

Daniel Ricciardo

Drivers already don't like the Alternative Tyre Allocation ("ATA")...

Lastly, let's go back to talking - as promised - of the new qualifying format for this event. The inspiring principle of this change, at least on paper, seems to be the desire to reduce the environmental footprint by Pirelli and Formula 1... In fact, the format provides for the availability of 11 sets of tyres (instead of the previous 13) for each driver, to be split in the qualifying as follows:

• Hard compound in Q1;
• Medium compound in Q2;
• Soft compound in Q3;

The suspicion that I personally have is that this format (which we will see again in Monza) is caused, more than by issues related to sustainability, by a desire to artificially create entertainment and turn the tables. Even the drivers themselves didn't appear very satisfied with this novelty, especially two "flagships" of our sport such as Verstappen and Hamilton...

"We had some limitations due to the new qualifying format, so we didn't want to waste too many sets and prepare for tomorrow in the best possible way. This is a shame, because there were so many people in the grandstands and we didn't give them much show... We'll see what we can do to improve the situation, because this saves too many tyres and I don't think it's correct"

Max Verstappen

"The format change for this weekend isn't great in my opinion, because it translates into fewer laps and this isn't ideal. There are a lot of wet tyres that maybe throw away during a weekend, so we could look more at that rather than taking anything away from us on the track, not to mention the show for the fans"

Lewis Hamilton

Such words already seem a rejection... Already tomorrow we'll be able to see what the new qualifying, scheduled for 16.00 CET, will offer in terms of entertainment. But first, see you at 12.30 CET for FP3!