Pierre Gasly has said that the team need to stay focussed in the run up to qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, the final race of the season before the summer shutdown, after which the teams will be heading into the final, European leg of the season, starting in Belgium at Spa-Franchochamps.
The Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda driver set a 1:19.352 in the first practice session, which placed him eleventh overall, running a total of thirty laps. In Free Practice 2, he set a 1:18.518, finishing up in ninth, running forty-three laps over the course of the session.
Gasly was happy to be back at the Hungaroring, which he feels is one of his favourite tracks and one that he has had positive results at in junior formulae, and he was positive about the outcome of the two sessions on Friday.
“Today was a really good day, I’m super happy to be in Budapest as it’s one of my favourite tracks,” said Gasly. “We had two positive sessions and completed a lot of testing.
“The feeling was the car was good from Free Practice 1 and we certainly have a good baseline for the rest of the weekend, so we need to keep building on this.
“We just need to stay focussed and hopefully keep the good performance for tomorrow.”, he added.
Gasly’s team-mate Brendon Hartley has also had similar success so far this weekend, finishing thirteenth and fifteenth across the two sessions, and he feels there is potential for a strong weekend at the Hungaroring for the whole team.
“It was a pretty clean day and in general I would say it was a good start to the weekend!” said Hartley. “It looks like we are definitely more competitive than in the previous couple of races and this is positive.
“Pierre had a very good FP2 having a small pace advantage on me, so we’ll be looking at the different test items overnight to try and maximise everything for tomorrow.”
The track in Budapest appears to suit Toro Rosso’s setup; they have been more competitive here that at tracks which were raced earlier in the season. They will hope they are able to keep the momentum up for qualifying.
