31/07/2010
NEWS STORY
In today's qualifying session for the Hungarian Grand Prix, Nico Hulkenberg maintained his recent form of contesting all three sessions and completed the afternoon in the top ten. After a strong start, Nico's AT&T Williams team-mate, Rubens Barrichello, fell foul of the short lap distance which created a very busy Q2 session during which the Brazilian was unable to find sufficient track space with which to extract the best from the Bridgestone option tyre. He will start tomorrow's race in P12.
Nico Hulkenberg: Reaching Q3 was good today as everybody is very aware how closely bunched the field is behind the front few teams, but as always, it is human nature to feel that more could have been possible. The Renaults and De La Rosa were strong today with just a couple of tenths between us all. Although overtaking will be challenging tomorrow, we know that the race is going to be highly competitive with the form of the cars around us.
Rubens Barrichello: In Q1, I was very happy, the car was perfect and I only needed one run and was quite comfortable to see the rest of the session out in the garage. Then going into Q2, I had a lot of traffic on my out lap and basically because the lap was so slow, I don't think the tyre got up to operating temperature. The tyres were just not there, and the car balance was out and by the last run, the tyres had given up.
Patrick Head, Director of Engineering: It is a long race ahead tomorrow and we will need better starts than at Hockenheim, as well as good first laps. Both tyres look stable but I think most of the front teams will run similar strategies.