Sebastian Vettel confident Hungaroring better suited to upgraded Ferrari

Ferrari

Vettel confident Hungaroring better suited to upgraded Ferrari

Vettel was more at ease in both the dry and wet conditions

Ian Parkes

Friday 17 July 2020 20:17 Updated: 20:23

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Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc are quietly confident the Hungaroring appears better suited to their revised Ferrari.

On a mixed weather day that allowed dry running in first practice, but with FP2 dominated by rain, both drivers are hoping the initial feeling from the track translates into a more positive weekend than was experienced across the two season-opening races at the Red Bull Ring.

Vettel and Leclerc finished sixth and seventh quickest in FP1 behind pacesetter Lewis Hamilton, whose best lap was eye-opening given it was set on the hard tyre compared to those behind him who ran either the soft or medium compound.

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Come FP2, Vettel emerged the quickest from a session which was hardly representative of what might be to come given the wet weather is set to figure prominently across the weekend, and in which only 13 drivers set lap times.

Vettel, though, was relatively happy as he said: "I think this morning was okay. This track should be a bit better for us and let’s hope that’s the case tomorrow, but we won’t know until we hit qualifying.

"We did more laps than others in the wet because after the weaknesses we showed last week, we need to understand the car a bit better.

"We need laps to gain confidence in the car. It’s not a secret that there’s still a lot of homework to do, but overall we seem to be a bit more competitive."

Ferrari's SF1000 sported a raft of upgrades for last weekend's Styrian Grand Prix that were brought forward by a race, but with Ferrari unable to gain little information given the heavy rain that dominated qualifying and the collision between the Ferrari pair on lap one of the race.

From his perspective, Leclerc claimed "things went better than we expected", although he was not as confident as Vettel in the wet.

"We arrived here with basically the same car we had in Austria but it seems to suit this track better, which is good to see," added Leclerc. "There are fewer straights here compared to the last race venue, and here we are quick around the corners.

"This afternoon, in the rain, we struggled a bit as we were trying out a few things and I wasn’t very happy as I was lacking a bit of confidence in the wet.

"In my first run on extreme wet tyres I only did two laps, which is not really representative, but looking at Seb’s lap time on the same tyre, he did a great job and there’s probably something positive to take from that.

"We’ve seen some positive signs this morning. Hopefully, we can convert these positive signs in free practice into a positive result in quali and in the race, but there’s still quite a lot of work to do on my side and I’ll try to be in a good place tomorrow."

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