What we learned from Friday practice at the 2024 F1 Hungarian GP

On Friday, Lando Norris and McLaren came out on top through pure pace. Red Bull has the advantage at the 2024 F1 Hungarian Grand Prix, but a closer look at the long run times suggests that Red Bull currently has the race pace advantage.

Red Bull also spent the day assessing the impact of their much talked about engine cover cooling upgrade, which had previously only been applied to one car. Max VerstappenCar, Ferrari On a renovated floor in Barcelona, ​​we analyzed all the data we could. Charles LeclercA confusing day.

All this and more is included in our assessment of how the Hungaroring has fared so far.

Today’s Story

The most noticeable element of FP1 was the sweltering heat, with track temperatures reaching a peak of 59.1°C – which Pirelli says is the third highest temperature in F1 history, after 60°C in this race in 2018 and 61°C in FP1 at the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix.

F1 gave a glimpse of Verstappen’s RB20 coming out of the pits (minus the high-waisted cooling channels that were added to Red Bull’s package earlier this year), but Perez stuck with the team’s old design.

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko later said: “Checo got the same upgrades as Max, but [sidepod and engine cover] It’s the most noticeable, so everyone thinks he doesn’t have it.

“But Checo has the rest,” Marko continued, “so the difference in terms of performance is small.”

Perez doesn’t have all of Red Bull’s upgrades, but the difference in performance is minimal.

Photo: Zach Mauger / Motorsport Images

Aston Martin also split the car specifications in FP1, Fernando Alonso Front wing, halo, floor, diffuser, and beam wing have been updated (Lance Stroll These were available during FP2, where Ferrari was fitted with an improved floor that the Scuderia hopes will eliminate the bouncing in high-speed corners that has plagued the SF-24 since Barcelona.

Carlos Sainz In the first session of the day, he set a best time of 1m18.713s to beat Leclerc to the lead, but then Verstappen caught up with him with a 1m18.989s to finish second, 0.276s behind. However, Verstappen was on second-hand soft tyres and missed the peak freshness of the new tyres – he started on them while Ferrari was on hard tyres.

The day went badly for Ferrari in FP2, when Leclerc, starting on the medium tyre, crashed at Turn 4, causing a long red flag interruption. He went wide over the exit kerb at the fast left-hand corner, causing the car to become unstable, spin off the track and crash into the barriers on the outside of the track from behind. After a 15-minute delay for the barriers to be redeployed, the field returned on soft tyres en masse, destroying Pérez’s time of 1m18.568s, who had been the leader earlier in the session on the medium tyre.

Verstappen was best in FP2, falling behind Norris in the first sector, but came close to the purple in the middle sector, only to drop back again when his soft rear tyres failed to hold up in the final corner.

First Russell took the lead with a time of 1 minute 18.294 seconds, then Norris set the fastest time of the day. Zhou GuanyuHe spun off in the same place as Leclerc, but was upset as Zhou entered Turn 4 by Perez running slowly on the racing line ahead of him. Sauber They fell just short of Red Bull. In FP1, Zhou suffered damage to his car due to a cooling component in the sidepod.

Norris’s time of 1m 17.788s remained unbeaten, while Sainz’s time on the soft tyre was 0.397s slower, with Verstappen again second, this time 0.243s behind another rival.

FP2 Overall Ranking

Verstappen set the second-fastest time on Friday despite complaining of brake problems.

Photo: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Verstappen was behind Norris in the first sector with the best time of FP2, but after approaching purple in the middle sector he dropped back again when his soft rear tyres failed to hold up in the final corner. The Dutch driver also complained about brake problems early in FP2, reporting over team radio that they were “not working”.

Oversteer and rapid acceleration on the exit of Turn 2 proved to be Verstappen’s biggest blow: GPS trace data from each car that set the fastest lap in FP2 on Friday afternoon showed that Verstappen had a slight edge over Norris entering the left-hand corner, but was 0.25 seconds behind on the exit – essentially the same gap the world champion faced by the end of the lap.

Interestingly, Red Bull didn’t seem to drop the engine mode too drastically (all the usual caveats regarding fuel load in this discipline and in practice still apply), but Sainz’s Ferrari recorded a consistently higher top speed at the end of the main straight in both FP1 and FP2, with Verstappen’s speed matching Norris’ in the latter. Typically, Red Bull’s engines run offset to all of their leading rivals during Friday practice.

in MercedesThe team feels the W15 has yet to find its sweet spot of balance over a single lap, but is confident it can at least give Red Bull a hard time. McLaren I will be competing in the preliminaries.

Mercedes’ fastest lap of FP2 (by Russell) was also due to tyre temperature being too low in the opening corner, with Russell losing 0.3 seconds of the final gap of 0.506 seconds to Norris’ best time at Turn 3 alone.

The pack then switched to a typical long run at the end of FP2.

What the data tells us

McLaren are the outliers here, being the only orange team running the hard C3 tyre at the end of FP2.

While other manufacturers were running the medium tyres, McLaren spent a great deal of time evaluating Pirelli’s hard compound.

Photo: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Norris and Oscar Piastri His average time on the hard tyre was 1m24.300s, matching Mercedes’ best time (Russell) on the medium tyre, but these (see below) saw Red Bull comfortably lead on Friday afternoon.

Mid- to long-term average

*N/A McLaren

Perez recorded the times shown in the table above, but what was more impressive was Verstappen’s degradation curve, with an average time of 1m 24.221s, better than any other driver on the medium tyres later in FP2.

Data seen by Autosport (which corrected for fuel load and engine mode settings) showed that Verstappen was able to regain his pace in the second half of a slightly longer nine-lap stint, and this was borne out by the lap times, with Verstappen starting in the low to mid 1m24s and, despite being slower initially, getting back into the 1m24s range on his final race simulation lap.

A combination of three tyre compounds has not been ruled out for race strategy purposes, but given the relentless heat this weekend it would be reasonable to expect the harder compounds to make a bigger difference.

For comparison, we can look at Norris’ best average time of 1m24.943s on the medium tyre for McLaren late in FP1, but the very hot track temperatures in that session meant there was a huge gap of a second between him and Red Bull’s best average in FP2.

Mercedes also achieved the unusual feat of having Hamilton complete a long run on the soft tyres in FP2, which he was forced to do after the set of medium tyres reserved for the run was flat-spotted early in FP2 and he made a costly mistake at Turn 1 going into the runoff. Aston was the only team to have Stroll complete a long run on the soft tyres, and his average time was 0.329s slower than Hamilton.

Looking at the average times, Ferrari appears to have room to improve, with Sainz 0.766s behind Perez. The length of Sainz’s stint suggests a fuel load, but what’s more interesting is the time he’s ahead. Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon For Alpine and Williams respectively.

Ferrari’s preparations hampered by Leclerc’s crash in FP2

Photo: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Data seen by Autosport shows that each car pushes hard at the start but then degrades rapidly, but the averages naturally rise due to the relatively short practice sessions.

However, during a real race stint such an approach would be severely punished, so it would be safer to look at average values ​​that show a more gentle treatment of the tyres. Esteban Ocon (1 minute 24.929 seconds) Logan Sargent (1:25.132) We’ll see where these two teams stand on Friday, and things still look good for Williams in that respect.

Red Bull took the same approach, with Perez pushing hard early on in the long runs before his times slowed due to the effects of heat, especially on the front tyres, and the team is trying to understand exactly how severe the degradation issues will be in the 2024 Hungarian heat.

So far, no combination of three tyre compounds has been ruled out for race strategy, but given the relentless heat this weekend, it would be reasonable to expect the harder compounds to make a bigger difference on Sunday.

So it was interesting to hear Marko tell the TV crew, based on Friday’s broadcast, “If I do a long run, I think it will be a battle between us and McLaren.”

“But if I’m right,” he added, “McLaren are already one hard tyre down and the temperature could make that a deciding factor again…”

But countering this is the winning strategy for the 2023 event, which was medium-hard-medium.

Will Norris regret running on the hard tyres later in the weekend?

Photo: Zach Mauger / Motorsport Images