It was a tricky day today. I thought it best not to take extra margins in FP2 as it wasn’t worth the risk, it was always drizzling and tricky out there with the wet kerbs. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t a useful session though, as every lap on track is worthwhile. The engineers will have quite a bit of data to look at tonight, so hopefully it will help us make progress tomorrow. Overall, we did a good job in understanding how the tyres and the setup works, what’s comfortable and what isn’t, just trying to get the car in a better window. Tomorrow we will try to put all of it together.

In FP1 I think we struggled a little bit with the car, but we knew where we needed to improve. Coming into FP2, we made a few changes and we could see straight away, on the couple of laps I did, that it was really positive. Unfortunately, I made a mistake at the last corner where I dipped a wheel onto the grass. Honestly, it was a silly error and just a misjudgement. It certainly wasn’t ideal, but in some ways, it’s better today than in FP3. Let’s see where we will pick up from tomorrow.

The great result for the team and the pace of the car at the German GP presented an ideal opportunity to learn more about the performance of the STR14 in colder conditions. In Hungary, the typical hot track conditions and C4 compound do not present the best combination for our package, but the team put a lot of focus into the analysis between Germany and here, so we arrived with a comprehensive test matrix to carry out across the two cars on Friday. The main areas we investigated were tyre behaviour, aerodynamic and mechanical, and trying to optimise the package on a hot track. At the start of FP1, neither car had a great balance but, even so, we were able to complete our test plans across both cars, whilst improving the balance by the end of the session. We took all of the best options from the analysis of the data after FP1 and applied this to the cars for FP2. However, the weather conditions in FP2 were not ideal for a standard run plan. Given the expected drizzle throughout much of the session and the fact the track was dry at the start, we decided to bring the short run on Option forward to the start of the session with a view of completing the long run as and when the track dried. The changes made to the cars were an improvement, and Alex was closing a very competitive lap when he unfortunately just touched the grass on the outside of Turn 14 and lost the car - the good news is that Alex is ok. Daniil completed his low fuel run and competitiveness was better, although there was still room to improve the balance. The weather is looking mixed for tomorrow, but we have a lot of data from today to analyse overnight and prepare the cars in the best way for the rest of the weekend. Given both sessions were declared wet, we will carry over an extra dry tyre to FP3, which is expected to be an action-packed session, trying to catch up on the dry running we missed today.

FP1 was dry and FP2 was wet, which is actually quite useful as the forecast suggests it could rain for tomorrow’s qualifying. Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s weekend got off to a solid start, while Scuderia Toro Rosso’s package has more room for improvement and we will work on that overnight. Alex’s crash was unfortunate, but at least he was unhurt.