Rivals Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen have both agreed on wanting the rules ‘looked at’ after lapping considerably slower to their rivals in the Hungarian Grand Prix second practice session. Drivers’ Championship runaway leader Verstappen completed just 17 laps in the second practice session and was 11th quickest, while Mercedes rival Hamilton was running 16th quickest.
A new tyre allocation was the talk of the paddock after practice with drivers having a reduced 11 sets over the weekend from 13 – in a bid to reduce usage. There will also be a test format to qualifying on Saturday with drivers forced to use hard tyres in Q1, mediums in Q2 and soft tyres in Q3.
Anticipating problems ahead this weekend Verstappen cautiously decided against wasting his tyres during practice and called for a change. He said: “With this new format, you are just super limited with the tyre sets that you can use, and I didn’t want to use them today to at least have a bit more of a better preparation tomorrow.
“With this format, we use as few tyre sets as possible on Friday. That’s very unfortunate for all that crowd here today. I do think that needs to be looked at. We have to see what we can do to improve that because we are literally saving tyres, which I think is not the correct thing.”
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Seven-time world champion Hamilton had a similar view of the new tyre allocation as he ran over a second per lap slower than the quickest in second practice Charles Leclerc. The British star also wants the rules re-considered and suggested reducing the number of wet tyres each team carries.
He told Sky Sports: “We only had one tyre for this session. This change is not a great format for this weekend. It just means we get less running, not ideal. There are a lot of wet tyres they throw away after every weekend. Maybe they should look at something like that rather than taking time on track away from fans.”
Fans turning out to watch the practice sessions in Hungary had hoped to see the impact of Red Bull’s upgrades on Verstappen’s car. With sidepods developed, new flaps on the front wing and the cooling system improved, it is unclear what effect they will have on the world champion’s performance.
Verstappen added: “The car didn’t feel wrong, I had a bit of understeer and also the long run went well, we were reasonably competitive. It is difficult to say anything about the speed over one lap, but in general, the car is quite strong.”
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