Ferrari was the best of the rest in qualifying in Hungary
Behind the untouchable Mercedes, Ferrari confirmed being the second force on the grid with Sebastian Vettel's 3rd place. Kimi Räikkönen is slightly behind again, in 5th place.
The trend continues weekend after weekend: Kimi Räikkönen is still struggling in qualifying. The Budapest session was no exception to the rule as he was once again outpaced by his teammate. Daniel Ricciardo even managed to slip between the two red cars.
This time, the Finn was hindered by his lack of practice on soft tires, which was a significant disadvantage during qualification: « This morning, we had some issues and couldn’t run on soft tires. Obviously, that didn’t help us and it was a bit of an unknown during qualifying. So it wasn’t too bad, and the car’s behavior was quite good. »
As for Sebastian Vettel, he had to work hard to keep Daniel Ricciardo behind him in Q3. The main objective will therefore be to keep him behind at the end of the race since the Mercedes seem out of reach: « If we remain realistic, Mercedes is very strong and it will be very hard to beat them. But we also have to look behind us since teams like Red Bull and Williams are very strong. Red Bull in particular had a very good Friday. But we managed to beat them in qualifying today, which showed that we were faster. »
Kimi Räikkönen will therefore rely on the advantage of being on the clean side of the track to achieve a good start and find himself in a position to fight with his teammate for the third step of the podium.
