Haas
New signing Bearman was at the wheel in the first free practice session in place of Hulkenberg, the German having been able to spend an extra hour with the air conditioning on a sweltering Friday in Hungary. Beaman made a good impression in a trouble-free hour of running, but Magnussen was not having such a good time, locking up and complaining about the brakes. In the second free practice session, Magnussen looked much happier and put in an impressive top-ten lap, while Hulkenberg took a little longer to get going.
Nico Hulkenberg – FP2: 1:18.791, P15
“I only did the second free practice session today, but the session went well. You’re always a bit behind and short on time, and the red flag cut things short a bit, but that’s how it is. The feeling in the car hasn’t been too bad from the start, so that’s the best I can take from it. We’re all very close together again and we know that overtaking is difficult around here, so track position is key tomorrow.”
Oliver Bearman – FP1: 1:20.371, P20
“It’s always great fun to get back in the car for FP1 with the team. The conditions were really interesting, the hottest track I’ve ever driven on, and that made it quite challenging from inside the car, and not just for me, but for the tyres as well. I learned a lot, had a lot of fun and can’t wait for the next one, although there’s still a long way to go.”
Kevin Magnussen – FP1: 1:20.295, P19; FP2: 1:18.315, P6
“In FP1 we weren’t very fast, but in FP2 we found the pace. The track was a bit cooler so maybe that had an influence (I’m not sure), but we were much more competitive and I hope we can maintain that tomorrow. We’re doing our thing, it’s been going well for us recently and we want to keep it that way. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t keep the form going, but the field is so tight that one weekend you’ll be up there and another weekend you might not. We have to make the most of it when we have the pace to score points.”
Ayao Komatsu, team principal
“Kevin had a pretty serious brake issue in FP1 so the car took some damage and so we weren’t able to get much information from that session. Ollie did a decent job in FP1. It was quite difficult with the track temperature at 58 degrees and we used medium and soft tyres, but on both of them Ollie only did one lap. He had very little chance to explore the car in that session but considering that, he did a good job again. In FP2, things went a little better as Kevin was happier with the car and although his brakes were still not great, his lap time on low fuel was decent. I think Nico could have done something very similar but he had traffic on his fast lap. On high fuel, as you can see, everyone suffered with degradation so we have some work to do there as well.”