Hungarian Grand Prix – practice

August 3, 2007 by paul
Filed under: Uncategorized

McLaren are keeping their drivers away from news conferences so they can focus on the race and not face questions about the spying controversy (“Stepneygate”).

Sakon Yamamoto has been confirmed as the #2 driver for Spyker, alongside Sutil.

Friday practice session 1:
Hamilton 1:23.557
Webber parks the Red Bull at the pit lane exit – you can hear the tyres squeal as the gearbox locks up
Liuzzi parks his Toro Rosso in the same spot
Alonso 1:23.030
Massa 1:22.519
Kubica 1:22.390
Raikkonen loses pace as he passes through a cloud of dust kicked up Heidfeld running a little wide
Fastest: RK (1:22.390), FM, KR, FA, LH, NH, NR, JB. Yamamoto was almost 6secs off the pace in P22.

Friday practice session 2:
Sato first to set a laptime so he’s P1 with 1:26.355
HK 1:23.530
HK 1:22.917
SV runs wide but eventially finds his way back to the track
FA 1:22.130 – that’s faster than the best time in the earlier practice session
LH 1:22.051
LH 1:21.729
FA runs wide in Turn 14
Slow-motion replay of LH locking up the front left and then it’s unloaded so much it’s not even making contact with the road so at least he didn’t flat spot it too badly
HK 1:21.570
AW runs wide in the fastest corner, Turn 8?
HK 1:21.283
30mins gone; 60mins left
FA 1:20.919
AS runs a little wide and touches the (very dry) grass
HK runs wide … and has another moment in T14
30mins left
As KR is pushed in to the Ferrari garage, you can see the front left is almost bald
Light shower forecast shortly – there’s also rain forecast for Saturday & Sunday, but right now it’s warm and very dry
Rain spots on the camera lens as RK passes the pits – he’s staying out on the super-soft (option) tyre
15mins left
AS runs wide again
5mins left
LH loses the tail of his McLaren – looked like he’d caught it but instead he spun into the gravel and beached it – he kept the engine running but just threw a shower of gravel onto the track
FM spins in the final turn and he’s facing the wrong way – he tried to spin around and didn’t manage it so he had to find reverse and have another go
Sessions ends
Fastest: FA (1:20.919), HK, LH, NR, NH, KR, FM, GF. Yamomoto was still 5.4secs off the pace – will he qualify for Sunday’s race?

SpeedTV showed a replay of the altercation between Alonso and Massa before they went onto the podium at the Nurburgring … but this time with subtitles! Apparently the Spaniard and the Brazilian were arguing in Italian, and Speed chose to replace some words with asterisks.