The Sauber F1 Team went to the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest with an update that includes, among other parts, a new rear bodywork and exhaust package. This package produced the expected result. As all the other teams have, the Sauber F1 Team used the new Pirelli tyre with the 2012 construction. Overall it was a productive Friday, and the team has a basis from which to make further progress for the rest of the weekend.

Nico Hulkenberg: "It has been a good Friday. I think the level of performance is a bit difficult to judge. We still need to work on low fuel pace, especially for qualifying. My run on the medium tyres also wasn’t the best, so there is room for improvement there. The long run was quite consistent and in terms of pace it also looked reasonable. We have a good baseline and did all the tests we needed to do. The tyres were pretty straightforward. Now we have to keep working, improve small bits and see where we finish tomorrow.

Esteban Gutierrez: "Overall it was a productive Friday. We were able to draw some conclusions about the new parts we brought here, and it seems like everything is working as expected. But we still have to wait and see what happens in qualifying. We will certainly be pushing in order to improve. The weather is quite a challenge for the tyres, as we saw this afternoon, but that is something everyone has to cope with. It’s a matter of finding the right balance between how much you can push and how long you want the tyres to last in one stint. The behaviour of the tyres is different. They are a bit more difficult to warm up, but therefore they last longer. Now we have to adapt as quickly as possible. Overall, I’m quite confident we can get a better result than in previous races."

Tom McCullough, Head of Track Engineering: "In FP1 we split the programme between the two cars, allowing us to understand different areas of the update package. FP2 was a standard tyre comparison with the 2012 construction Pirelli tyres. Overall the package delivered what we expected, and we are happy with the data we gathered today, concentrating mainly on race information. Tomorrow morning we’ll be preparing to make sure we get the most out of the package in qualifying trim."

Check out our Friday gallery, here.