There have been blended feelings within the Ferrari storage following the opening day of motion on the Hungarian Grand Prix, with Charles Leclerc hailing a “fairly optimistic” begin after taking P3 in each follow classes whereas Lewis Hamilton admitted that Friday had “not been a very good day” on his facet.
Off the again of claiming a podium final outing in Belgium, Leclerc seemed to have carried that type to the Hungaroring, having been the closest challenger to the pace-setting McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri throughout free follow.
Reflecting on his day after leaping out of the automobile, Leclerc mentioned of his third place outcome: “For now it appears prefer it’s our place, and realistically I feel it’s going to be very powerful to go and beat the McLarens tomorrow – they appear to be a step ahead, however by no means say by no means.
“The sensation with the automobile has been fairly optimistic to date. We’ve obtained to do some steps, extra in the suitable route for tomorrow, however for now the sensation is sweet.”
Pushed on whether or not he feels that the Scuderia are forward of Mercedes and a few of their different shut rivals, Leclerc seemed forward to Saturday’s Qualifying as he responded: “For now we’re, however we are able to by no means rule them out.
“It’s at all times very variable from Friday to Saturday, so I feel we’ll must see tomorrow once we come to the monitor and see with the brand new situations whether or not the pecking order is similar.
As for Hamilton, the Briton positioned in fifth and sixth respectively throughout every of the day’s follow classes.
Nevertheless, when requested if he felt he had made optimistic progress all through Friday, Hamilton answered: “In the present day was not a very good day for me, an enormous, massive battle with the stability of the automobile and quite a bit completely different to the earlier years I’ve been right here.
“We tried two various things, we tried rectifying among the stability issues we had in FP1. We modified the automobile for FP2 and it’s simply inconsistent, very, very inconsistent stability from nook to nook, so you possibly can’t say it’s simply understeer, you possibly can’t simply say it’s oversteer.
“It’s simply removed from being on rails and really out of stability. However I feel it’s in all probability one thing to do with perhaps tyre temperatures or one thing, so we’re going to attempt to determine that out for tomorrow.”
By way of whether or not he can hope for a second row in Saturday’s Qualifying, Hamilton downplayed his possibilities.
“I imply, Charles has been fast in the present day – he’s been usually proud of the automobile. For me I’m fairly far off, so I extremely doubt it,” the seven-time World Champion conceded.
