Aston Martin F1 ended the first day of the Hungarian GP weekend in the Top 5, surprising its rivals with an impressive pace. Fernando Alonso, who was replaced by Felipe Drugovich in FP1, was able to find lap time with the gathered data. Lance Stroll seemed happy with the balance.
Tweaked F1 front wing for Aston Martin at Hungarian GP
Going into the weekend, Aston Martin made adjustments to the front wing introduced in Belgium. According to the team, the front wing flap has a more aggressive design that increases the total amount of load the wing can generate to be used with the higher downforce rear wing.
“Obviously, I missed FP1, but FP2 felt good,” Alonso said after second practice. “The balance is still maybe not in the window where probably I would like the car to be. A little bit of understeer mid-corner and struggling to rotate the car on the slow speed.
“But yeah, normal for a first practise of the weekend. Let’s see what we can change overnight,” he adds.
“It felt good. I think, just good balance today,” Stroll said, but keeps hopes low regarding the surprising pace: “I mean, timesheets on Friday… it’s always hard to know what everyone’s doing with fuel loads and all that. The car felt good. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”
Asked if the pace may have been due to landing a strong set-up right away, the Canadian kept his answer short: “Maybe… I don’t know. It just felt like the car was behaving well today.”
Drugovich says his session went smoothly, as all data was gathered. He was even able to squeeze a lap on soft tyres in, but “my lap was a bit messy, full of traffic, and then after I had a massive lock-up into Turn 1 in the second lap, which was probably not ideal!“
He adds: “But I needed to try to get some fun out of it. So, yeah, it was all good, no problem with that.”
Alonso missed FP1 due to back injury
Drugovich replaced the experienced Spanish driver in the first session of the weekend. He reveals that he was informed in the morning: “I got the confirmation this morning, which was quite last minute, I would say. But yeah, good news to have in the morning, I would say.”
There wasn’t much time to prepare between Belgium and Hungary, but Drugovich says it didn’t differ to any other FP1 he did before. The Brazilian says there were “a few meetings with the engineers” and he was given some targets for the session.
“It’s the same as yesterday. It’s going to be like this for the whole weekend,” Alonso said when asked on his muscle injury in the lumbar area on his back. “I need some rest. But the summer break is coming, so it’s another two days of managing the comfort on the seat. We found different solutions with air pads and another things, yesterday.” An MRI was made during the week.
On a positive note, there was no pain during FP2: “I don’t have pain in the car, which is the most important thing.” It should be manageable, Alonso hopes.
After the Hungarian GP, Formula 1 will enter its summer break. Enough time for Alonso to rest.
