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McLaren had an extremely strong start to the 2022 F1 Hungarian GP weekend with both its drivers and the car looking great on track on Friday.
Unlike the last few races where McLaren found it hard to breach the top-ten in the timesheets on Friday, this was a surprise outcome for the team. At the end of the FP2 session, both Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo found themselves in the top five of the standings, further proving how good the team's pace is this weekend.
Having said that, Lando Norris was cautious as he talked about how the top-three teams that tend to turn up the pace even more on Saturdays. He said:
“Things are feeling good. The car is in a good place and seems to be suiting this track a little bit more. But we’re always a little quicker in FP2 than where we end up being on Saturday. Normally, we know everyone else, especially Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes usually step it up a lot more tomorrow.’’
He further said:
“But we’re feeling good. I can be happy in saying the car is in a reasonable position. We’re probably a little bit ahead of where we were in Paul Ricard. I’m not expecting to be fighting for pole, but hopefully we can be a little bit ahead of where we were in France, especially for the race.”
Andrea Stella, McLaren's executive racing director, was also happy with the way the car performed on Friday and was looking forward to the mixed conditions that were forecast for Saturday. He said:
“A productive Friday for us at the Hungaroring. Overall, the car seems to have decent potential. It ran without issue, which allowed us to get through a busy programme split between more work to fully understand the new aerodynamic package we introduced in France, and also running to understand tyre behaviour for this weekend.’’
McLaren had one of the better Fridays of the season: Daniel Ricciardo
Daniel Ricciardo was extremely happy at the end of the day on Friday. The McLaren driver found himself in fifth place after FP2 and felt that this was probably one of the better Fridays of the season for the team. He said:
“I think it was a good day, it was solid. We had a pretty good showing in both sessions, which is positive. Obviously, we had updates last week and perhaps they’re working a little bit better around this track so that’s good.’’
He added:
“I think there’s still bits and pieces we can improve on, for sure, but it’s been a positive Friday and one of the better ones this year. I’m happy with that, but we will probably have to put some wet set-up in for tomorrow, but it’s nice to have a solid Friday and I think everyone’s in good spirits.”
The team lost P4 in the Constructor Standings to Alpine after the French GP last weekend, and as the battle intensifies this season, McLaren will be hoping to maximize the points it can score this weekend.
