Vasseur remains realistic despite good results in practice: “It’s not on Friday that you’re doing pole”

Written by Bo Helmus

Leclerc set the fastest time on Friday morning | Credit: Formula One

Ferrari have set the benchmark for the rest of the weekend at the Hungaroring. Their closest competitors seem miles away, but can the Scuderia keep that up throughout the weekend?

In the first practice session, Charles Leclerc set the fastest time of 1:19,075. Lewis Hamilton came in third place, five-and-a-half tenths behind his teammate. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the team in red. Leclerc got into trouble. He suffered a mechanical issue and had to be wheeled back to his garage. 

Leclerc couldn’t reach his garage on his own | Credit: Formula One

Luckily for the Monegasque, his mechanics fixed the car in time for the second practice session. The prancing horses topped the timing sheets again, with a 1:18.729 for Hamilton and Leclerc 0.148 behind. Their closest competitor was Lando Norris, but he was half a second slower than the Ferrari’s. 

Leclerc reacts to his Friday: “It was a relatively strong day. From the beginning I felt quite good with the car, and performance seemed to be good straightaway so that’s a good thing.”

The times are looking promising, but he knows that there’s still a long why to go: The weekend is still long. From Friday to Saturday, we see teams making a jump in performance. Normally we are on the back foot on the Friday so it’s a good thing that we had a good Friday, but we still need to stay on it and work hard in order to get better for tomorrow.”

The Monegasque doesn’t want to jinx anything for qualifying: “It’s going to be tight tomorrow as always. I don’t expect us to have the gap that we’ve had today, so we’ll have to do everything perfect. If the feeling is there, I’m sure we’ll do a good job in Q3.”

Leclerc recognizes that these times don’t mean anything yet | Credit: Formula One

Ferrari team principal Frédéric Vasseur won’t jump to any conclusions on the pace yet: “It was a bit more messy today in the afternoon in FP2 with traffic, the red flag and so on. So far, the balance is okay.”

He is hoping for a clean third practice session: “That means that we'll probably see a bit more tomorrow morning with the car a bit more split on track, and it will probably be a bit easier to do a proper lap.”

The Frenchman remains realistic: “So far so good but it’s not on Friday that you’re doing pole, and even less that you win the race. It’s good to start the weekend like this but let’s see tomorrow. It will be another story.”