2014 Hungarian GP practice - Driver reaction

The 22 drivers have their say on Friday's running in Buadapest where Lewis Hamilton topped both sessions.

Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel: “I think we could be a little bit closer this weekend, at least today it looked a bit better, but then again we saw that people can make a big step from Friday to Saturday, particularly Williams, so we have to be careful. We hope we can do a big enough step to keep the pace of today (for tomorrow) and to be able to use a little bit more power, but we’ll have to wait and see where we are.”

Daniel Ricciardo: “To be honest we struggled quite a lot today trying to find the grip. This circuit does tend to ramp up a lot over the weekend, this morning’s session the grip was really low for everyone and we saw a lot of people sliding. We thought we would find some more this afternoon but we didn’t quite evolve with the track, so we’ve got a bit of work to do tonight to understand that, but that’s what Friday’s are for, you learn, you try things and hopefully you put it all together Friday night in the best way for qualifying.”

Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton: “We struggled with poor grip on track today. I don't know if that's down to the tyres or the track itself but it was quite bad throughout both sessions. It's going to be important to get a good grid position tomorrow as it will be difficult to follow cars on this track and it's always tough to overtake here. 

“We have some work to do overnight to ensure we get the best setup for the weekend as we're not fully comfortable with the car just yet, but our race pace looked okay. We'll have to look through the data to really know where we stand.”

Nico Rosberg: “I was a bit surprised that we had the quickest car here today as I expected the Red Bulls to have gotten a bit closer again, so that's a really encouraging start to the weekend. The car feels great and is super quick in the corners, so overall I'm quite happy. 

“I definitely still need to find some time and there is some setup work for me and my engineers to do tonight if we want to achieve that. But I'm confident that we can make it happen. Qualifying will be crucial here, as overtaking is not easy at this great track. We'll work hard as always during the evening and see what happens tomorrow.”

Ferrari

Fernando Alonso: “Going from one race to the next doesn't usually involve many changes, but here, unlike what usually happens on a Friday, we had to work a lot on the set-up, to try and adapt the car to the circuit, the tyres and the high temperatures. So there was rather more work than usual, but it produced results and we improved run after run. Sure, there’s still a lot to do to be as competitive as we’d like, but I think we’re on the right road. 

“There’s less grip here than in previous years, but it’s the same for everyone and now we have to try and prepare the car as well as possible for qualifying and the race. High temperatures like those we saw today are always challenging for the tyres, but the forecast is for cooler conditions from tomorrow and maybe rain on Sunday, so we have to be ready for every eventuality.”

Kimi Raikkonen: “In the first free practice session, we managed to do a good job, testing various solutions on the programme and I was fee