Michael Schumacher doesn't feel his crash in second practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix will have any effect on his chances this weekend. The Mercedes driver locked up on the wet track at turn twelve, hitting the wall nose first, but the car escaped without serious damage and the seven-times champion was encouraged by the way the W03 felt before his error.
“We had two sessions with normal running, expect for my little crash into the tyres this afternoon. I just locked up and run out of road. By hitting the tyres, I lost the front wing, but other than that, nothing is damaged on the car, I believe. It was the kind of incident that happens when suddenly a shower hits the dry track. The car felt okay until then, and we will now look deep into our data to find a good way to approach qualifying and the race. The rain might undoubtedly be an opportunity but I am not totally sure about the forecast. Let’s see what we can take away from here.”
Schumacher was tenth quickest overall with Nico Rosberg eleventh on a near identical time and the younger German enjoyed his early laps at the Hungaroring.
“This is a great track to drive, and it was really exciting out there, particularly this afternoon with the mixed conditions. At the end in some places it was dry, and in others, there were rivers of water. It was a decent day of testing for us overall. We worked a lot on different things, and this afternoon we tried to bring my car in a different working window mechanically, but there is still some work to do on that tomorrow.”
With McLaren, Ferrari and Lotus all looking strong on Friday, team principal Ross Brawn admits they need to improve the balance of their car to be sure of getting both into Q3.
“We had a mixed day really. We did some lower fuel work this morning and planned to do higher fuel this afternoon, however the rain came just as we began that programme so there is still some work to do there. Michael had an unfortunate incident during P2 when the car aquaplaned and went straight off. The conditions were similar to those which we might see on Sunday so we were keen to get out and see how the car was, and we were still able to pick up quite a lot of useful information from Nico. The balance of the car isn’t great yet around this technically challenging circuit and there is some work that we want to do tonight to improve the car for the weekend.”
