Daniel Ricciardo
Both Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris proved to be standout performers on the opening day of the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix.
The McLaren duo performed well in both outings, with Ricciardo’s eighth fastest time in Free Practice 1 the worst result of the two sessions.
This is how the day ended with Norris, second fastest, behind Charles Leclerc, while Ricciardo was the fifth best and, above all, far from the sixth fastest Fernando Alonso.
“It’s been a while, for sure,” Ricciardo said of his performance.
“I feel like it was 2020 where I was Mr Friday for a while, I was second and third in a lot of sessions and the chat after FP2 was always ‘that was another good Friday’.
“You haven’t done that in a while [the media] he said that so it’s ok.
“I think it was a pretty competitive day,” he added.
“Obviously you don’t know what the others are doing in FP2 as well, like the performance races, but we were also quite competitive in FP1.
“So hopefully that means we’re really fast this weekend.
“I think the car felt good, of course there are some corners where we want more, but overall in the lap I think we had a decent car and hit the ground running.
“We’re still going to try and obviously we’re going to find more, because obviously you have to wait as well as other people do, but for us I think there’s still a bit of fine-tuning.
“It was definitely a good day.”
McLaren’s apparent Hungarian boost comes from an update package delivered in France last weekend, with further refinements due this weekend.
This has provided more grip, and while it hasn’t brought the MCL36 up to par with Ferrari and Red Bull, the consensus is that it has brought it closer.
Norris also cautioned against getting too excited about the times, suggesting his team may have shown their hand more than their rivals.
“I think today is a little bit like an overstatement of our performance just because we’ve come further than other people have,” he said.
“Definitely, we are not fighting for the positions of Ferrari and Red Bull, but it seems that we are in a good place.
“Maybe things are a bit ahead of where we were at Paul Ricard, which is a good thing, but it’s still Friday.
“The weather will change tomorrow so we’ll have to wait and see, but things at the moment are a bit better than they were, so that’s a positive.”
The weather was warm and sunny on Friday, but a storm is forecast for Saturday morning.
Free practice 3 is expected to be wet, and the weather doesn’t improve until after qualifying: the chance of rain is greater than 80 percent for much of the day.
The final hour of practice in Hungary starts at 21:00 AEST tonight before qualifying at midnight.