Santino Ferrucci admitted it took him some time to adapt to the 2017 Haas F1 Team VF17, which he felt was a completely different beast to tame that he was used to.
The American, who switched to the FIA Formula 2 Championship at Hungaroring last weekend after starting the year in the GP3 Series, struggled to get used to the car early on, but felt that by the end of the day he was much more at ease with it, and he hopes now to build on that feeling on Wednesday.
Ferrucci last tested a Formula 1 car at the post-British Grand Prix test in 2016, but the 2017 cars are very different from their predecessors, with much more downforce and faster cornering speeds, and all this meant he was forced to learn how to adapt to the VF17 in the early stages of the day.
“This morning I struggled a lot to adjust to the car,” said Ferrucci. “It’s a lot different to anything else out there, especially the F2 car. It took three or four runs before I was acclimated and happy with how I was in the car. In the afternoon, we made really good changes.
“At the end of the day, I was able to push a bit more and work on my own driving to where I now feel like I’m using almost 95 percent of the car to its optimum.
“Tomorrow, I’m really looking forward to getting on some Supersoft tyres and doing some qualifying runs.”
