Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel tops practice sessions at Hungarian Grand Prix
Red Bull once again proved that regardless of what the rivals do, they still own the fastest cars. At the practice session at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel was in scintillating form and was the quickest in both sessions. Ferrari did catch up to him to some degree in the 2nd session, but Vettel still held his own and registered the fastest time of the day.
The German driver was more than half a second ahead of Fernando Alonso, clocking the best time of 20.087 seconds. McLaren had a battle on their hands with an unlikely competitor in the shape of Renault for the 3rd spot, half a second behind Fernando Alonso.
The first practice session in the morning was completely dominated by Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull. Although the rival teams were hoping that the 2nd session would be a bit different, they were proven wrong and the Austrian team continued to dominate the proceedings.
The track that was a bit warm in the first session did cool down to some degree in the 2nd, but the Red Bulls were still hot and led the pack. Vettel first used super soft tyres and lapped the fastest time; his teammate Webber tried hard to match Vettel step for step, but was interrupted by some traffic.
Fernando Alonso who was also on super soft tyres and with a clear track ahead of him, managed to gather some good speed and got between the two Red Bulls. Ferrari’s other driver, Felipe Massa, was in 4th fastest. Alonso was clearly the only driver who looked capable of posing any serious threat to the Red Bulls in qualifying on Saturday.
Lewis Hamilton of McLaren was 6th quickest on the day; ahead of him was Vitaly Petrov of Renault. The current world champion, Jenson Button, had another disappointing day out and finished in the 9th spot in the end. Renault’s 2nd driver Robert Kubica and Nico Hulkenberg from Williams had one of the most disappointing days in the season so far.
After the race, the 2008 champion Lewis Hamilton said that he knows that the McLarens are some distance off the pace and have a slim chance of getting something from the weekend. He added that the engineers, though, have been working hard to come up with new ideas.
Hamilton said that he did not think that Red Bulls could actually get quicker but they did. He added that the gap has widened because Red Bull have improved while McLaren have not made any progress from Germany to Hungary.
The youngest world champion said that he feels that his car is losing time on different areas; he added that while making turns his car does not feel as stable. He said that if he tries to push the car hard on turns, it starts to swerve and therefore makes him lose more time. Hamilton said that the team engineers have been working hard on improving the down force of the car, but so far it has not worked to good effect.
Fernando Alonso, meanwhile, looked quite convinced with his car; he said that even though he was not able to get the best time in practice, he is confident that qualifying would be much better. Alonso added that the diffuser has been working to great effect and his car felt good in the 2nd session especially. Fernando said that Red Bull definitely have tried to improve their cars after the German Grand Prix, and feels that if he can get few things right on Saturday, there is no reason why he should not get pole position in qualifying.
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