Ladies and Gentlemen,

Back to business as usual for Mercedes with Champ Lewis setting the pace on both sessions, but the Red Bull cars are emerging as their closest challenger. The headlight news today was the spectacular accident by PER in the Force India from which fortunately he walked away unscathed. The car snapped on corner exit sending it to the inner barrier and then flipping it over on impact as it cut one of its loose wheel underneath. Take a look (thanks Uwe):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzx3x7SQuAs

The session was red flagged and both Force India cars were retired for the day to investigate the cause of the rear suspension failure. The Mexican was 8th at the time.

Friday’s results:

P1- HAM (1.25.141) ROS RAI RIC KVY VET SAI PER BOT VER

P2- HAM (1.23.949) KVY RIC ROS RAI SAI VET ALO BOT MAS

The Hungaroring is typically HAM’s territory, he’s won here 4 of his 8 appearances, 2 of the last 3. He was impressive already lapping faster than the rest on the primes  -the harder of the 2 Pirelli: medium/white, soft/yellow-  Only ROS came closer in P1 by 1 tenth, his advantage in P2 was over 3 tenths over KVY. Despite RIC ending P2 in a cloud of smoke with yet another Renault motor blowing up, it’s clear that both teams from the energy drink company with their agile chassis and great downforce are going to be competitive in this tight, slow-corner layout. Horsepower is minimized with only one straight (908m, 313 kph top speed today by ROS), so it could be that we keep an eye on Red Bull / Toro Rosso for ‘best of the rest’ instead of the expected Ferrari/Williams battle. VET had 2 spins this morning ending both session way behind teammate RAI. And to keep fueling the rumors about Lotus financial troubles Pirelli didn’t supply the Enstone team with tyres arguing “unpaid invoices” until the very last minute preventing GRO and MAL to conduct their regular track programs.

Mercedes has taken the last 20 straight poles and is getting close to the record of 24 by Williams in 1992-93. Lewis has been on pole 8 of the 9 races this year, one more than he took all last season. Nico beat him in Spain. HAM has 46 career poles, ROS 16. Ferrari’s last pole was in Germany with ALO back in 2012.

Our QF forecast is getting a little more complicated this time, and of course this will reflect on the crazy competitive leaderboard we are experiencing this year. No pressure…

Our best 2015 QF marks come from Fernando /21, Manbos & Tim /19, Erik /16.

Cato - HAM  ROS  KVY

Your turn - shoot!