Antonio Giovinazzi felt it was a far from straightforward opening day at the Hungaroring on Friday as the weather played havoc with proceedings, with teams up and down the grid getting very limited dry weather information.
The Italian, who was handed a post-race penalty in last weekend’s German Grand Prix that relegated him from eighth to thirteenth in the final reckoning, ended down in sixteenth in the morning session after being forced to abort his first run due to rain, and it was a similar story in the afternoon for the Alfa Romeo Racing driver, although his best lap was good enough to finish the session ninth fastest.
“It hasn’t been the most straightforward day, because of the weather conditions,” admitted Giovinazzi. “I went out in FP1 but it started raining on my first run and I had to abort my lap.
“It was pretty much the same in the afternoon session: I managed only one run in the dry, but at least we were able to do some runs in the wet. In the end, it was a positive day to gather some data on wet weather, as it may rain tomorrow.
“Let’s see what we can achieve: our car seems to be working well in both the dry and the wet so we’ll just keep working hard to get a good result.”
Team-mate Kimi Räikkönen said the practice conditions were far from ideal with very limited dry weather running, but his one saving grace that it was at least the same for everyone.
The Finn was able to set the tenth best time of the morning session and was a creditable sixth in the afternoon, just over eight-tenths of a second down on the best lap time set by Red Bull Racing’s Pierre Gasly.
“That was not exactly what we were hoping for,” said Räikkönen. “We got just two laps in the dry done in the afternoon, so this session was pretty useless.
“But at least it’s the same for everyone.”
