Today's Selected Quotes - Hungarian GP

McLaren

David Coulthard: "A usual Friday where we did a lot of work on race set-up and I’m happy with the performance. Both Mika and myself completed all our work in the second session to allow for the dust on the track to clear. Its always difficult to judge exactly where you are compared to everybody else in Free Practice because you don’t know what fuel levels the other cars are running with but its looking good."

Mika Hakkinen: "I’m very happy with today’s work and we have made considerable progress with the balance of the car. This circuit is unique because it’s extremely dusty and bumpy with very fast corners so balance and traction are important. The engineers made radical changes to the set up throughout the session and it appears that we have managed to get it right."

Ron Dennis: "An uneventful and productive first day for both drivers with the only disruption coming from the yellow flags in the last 20 minutes."

Norbert Haug: "A very constructive session for both David and Mika. The team and the drivers found a good set-up for the race, and our aim is now to repeat today’s performance tomorrow and on Sunday."

Ferrari

Michael Schumacher: "We had a pretty average Friday. We have not yet found the optimum set-up on the car and we will now analyse all the data in order to get the best out of it. However, I am optimistic and there is no reason why the car should not go well here. I am sure we can find the right set-up soon. As usual here in Hungary, the track had a lot more grip in the second hour. The gaps are very small and I don’t think our main rivals will make life easy for us and of course the opposite also applies."

Rubens Barrichello: "The work we did this morning and especially in the afternoon, was concentrated on preparing for the race. In general, our car is handling quite well on this track. We still need to make a few adjustments to get the best set-up, especially as this track doesn’t really suit me. I used just one set of tyres."

Jean Todt: "As usual on Friday, we worked in race trim to establish a good set up on our cars. However, at the moment, we have not found the balance we were looking for. The track seems very slippery. We only used one set of tyres per car. I expect tomorrow’s qualifying to be very close and as usual, positions on the front two rows will be fought out between ourselves and our closest rivals. On this track, grid positions take on a significant importance given the difficulty of overtaking during the race. Getting a good position tomorrow afternoon will be vital."

Jordan

Jarno Trulli: "It's been a positive day. I didn't have any major problems. The main thing we worked on was getting rid of understeer, which is the usual problem on this tight track. But it's a difficult problem to solve because the track conditions are changing all the time. I'm quite happy because, once the car is okay, I usually go well here. Meanwhile, I'd like to say a big "Hello!" to Danny Slater, my No. 2 mechanic who can't be here this weekend."

Heinz-Harald Frentzen: "It's the usual problem here - no different than normal. We had to work harder than we expected on finding a good balance. We went through a lot of things and made progress today. But qualifying tomorrow is going to be a different issue. So far, though, it has been pretty good."

Benetton

Giancarlo Fisichella: "We made some good progress with the set-up in the two sessions. This morning on my first run I had some problems with understeer but we have corrected that and now just need to work on finding more grip. If I finish in the same position tomorrow I will be happy!"

Alexander Wurz: "We haven't achieved a good set-up on my car yet as we are still suffering from under- and oversteer. We are sure we can be quick here so we just need to study the data a bit more, and given that we ran on a high fuel load and only one set of tyres, I'm quite confident for tomorrow."

Pat Symonds, Technical Director: "After the successful test at Valencia last week, we decided to conserve the amount of running that we did here today, which was also due to the fact that during the first session the circuit is very dirty. This unfortunately leads to a boring session for the spectators, but nevertheless we got the work done that we planned. We still haven't achieved the balance we would like on the cars, but we are probably not a long way off. We have done further evaluations of our aerodynamic package and are very satisfied with it."

Williams

Ralf Schumacher: "Everything is fine so far. Today we managed to try everything we expected. We made good use of some information that we collected last week in the testing in Valencia. We need to improve a couple of things before qualifying, but I am quite happy."

Jenson Button: "I think this circuit is quite hard to learn. It's tight and twisty and a couple of the corners are very long, which makes it difficult to know where to apex and where to go on the throttle. Very difficult. There are a couple of blind corners as well. It's a good circuit though and we've just got to keep pushing and make some more changes and find the right tuning for tomorrow. The set-up of the car is getting better and better."

Patrick Head, Technical Director: "We had a useful day with both cars. Jenson needed to learn the circuit which he did very quickly. We've been working on aspects which will affect our race performance and now we have to focus strongly on our qualifying position."

Dr Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport Director: "Beside the work on the race set-up, Friday's practice is very important to find the right rhythm, which both drivers managed to do pretty well today. Also with regards to the engines both the sessions ran smoothly. All in all, the team had quite a good start."

Jaguar

Eddie Irvine: "The car feels reasonably good round here, much like we expected it would, given that it works well in high-downforce trim. Once we put downforce on it, it's quite a good car, and it's quite driveable. We should be competitive here. The set-up changes we made improved the balance, which is the key to a good qualifying lap on a twisty circuit such as this. I'm confident that we can take aim at the top six for qualifying, but it's going to be very tight among the mid-grid runners. Qualifying is so important at the Hungaroring, much the same as at Monaco, because the race can be very processional with little chance of overtaking."

Johnny Herbert: "It was an uneventful day, really. I was hampered by the car understeering, which is usual at this track, but unfortunately I didn't make as much progress as we would have liked. We've got to be more competitive than we have been today, as a good grid position is so important here. We've got a lot of work to do tonight, but I'm confident we'll come up with something for tomorrow. We changed the car, and we got a direction, but the track will be different tomorrow. The F3000 cars will have been out, and there will be a bit more rubber down. We were playing with fuel all the way through. I think for the last run we took it out, but there were yellow all round the track, so I couldn't do anything."

Gary Anderson: "During the first session, like most people, we completed an installation lap and then sat back and waited for the 'roadsweepers' to do their work. Because the track is so rarely used, it takes a while for the grip level to build up so you don’t learn a lot running while the track is green. We got through quite a bit of work on set-up and achieved a pretty good balance. We proved in Monaco that the car is effective in high-downforce configuration, so we’re optimistic about a good qualifying spot tomorrow."

Sauber

Pedro Diniz: "We got through a lot of work today, honing the basic set-up that we arrived at during testing at Valencia last week. It’s difficult to compare the grip levels between the two tracks, but by the end of the day I guess we had more grip here as more rubber went down. This morning I had understeer but we gradually reduced that and the balance was quite nice until I switched to new tyres near the end. Then the understeer came back, so there is still some work to do, but I’m quite happy so far."

Mika Salo: "We worked on our programme as intended today and had no problems apart from some understeer. This morning the car felt nervous over the bumps, but we improved that for this afternoon, and everything went as I had expected."

Peter Sauber: "Mika and Pedro both had the reliability to do a lot of laps today, and everything proceeded to schedule."

BAR

Jacques Villeneuve: "I quite like this circuit as there is a nice rhythm between the corners, but it doesn't seem to suit our car as well as the faster circuits. Funnily enough, I have never been that quick around here, but in the races the car has run pretty well, so hopefully we can improve during the weekend."

Ricardo Zonta: "It has not been a very productive day for me. In terms of set-up, the car just wasn't as consistent on new and old tyres as it should have been, with the result that we had to make more adjustments and bigger changes than normal to balance the chassis. We are also lacking overall grip. It's not clear whether the soft or the extra soft tyres will be the better option and we didn't get the chance to do a direct comparison today. Hopefully we can improve tomorrow."

Takefumi Hosaka, Managing Director, Honda R&D: "We knew that the car would not be ideally suited to low speed circuits, but we are trying to get the best out of the car. As none of the teams have tested at this circuit, we only have a limited amount of time to make adjustments to the car, so we have to make the most of the practice sessions. We have more work to do tomorrow morning, to ensure that we can deliver the best possible performance in qualifying."

Arrows

Pedro de la Rosa: "We tried plenty of things on the car set-up. We struggled on the first session but for the second session we improved the car quite a lot, although we still have many things to try for tomorrow. I also made a mistake on my last outing and went off after going too fast into a corner, but that's not too important. The important thing for me is that we have a lot of work to do for tomorrow and now we just have to do it."

Jos Verstappen: "It was a very hard session for me here. There was a lot of oversteer which is something we didn't expect to have and we have to do a lot of work for tomorrow. At the moment I am not at all happy with the balance of the car so it was just very difficult to do a proper lap. We didn't go out for most of the first session as the track had a lot of improving to do, and the track is getting quicker and quicker, but the most important thing for us is to get good balance."

Minardi

Marc Gene "Today we tried different set-ups and I am pleased with the work we have done so far. Both sessions were trouble free and we got already a fairly good car balance. One thing is certain, the top runners are performing particularly well this season and, apart from them, our gap is getting shorter and shorter. Today I have no idea whether the others were running with more or less fuel load on board, but as far as we are concerned the car is good and I am confident for tomorrow."

Gaston Mazzacane: "There is only one thing to say: today was an unfortunate and miserable day because I could not take any profit from the two free practice sessions which were so important to me. We had a precise working programme to follow given that this is the first time that I meet this track in F1. And it is a difficult track, very narrow and bumpy. Therefore, I needed to work as much as possible on the set-ups for tomorrow, yet everything was upset owing to a few mechanical mishaps that disturbed both sessions. I cannot do anything but forget this negative day and focus on tomorrow’s work."