Mercedes Benz

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

Budapest, Hungary, Jul 30, 2010

Five days after the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, Formula One was back in action today with the first two practice sessions taking place at the Hungaroring in Budapest ahead of Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.


With their MGP W01 cars running with a revised aerodynamic package for this race, Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg concentrated on developing the set-up and balance, with a particular focus on race preparation.

Michael completed 57 laps and finished the day in 10th position with Nico covering 53 laps in 13th place.

Drivers - Car No. - Chassis No. - Practice 1 - Practice 2
Michael Schumacher - 3 - MGP W01 / 02 - 26 laps, 1:22.792, P9 - 31 laps, 1:21.773, P10
Nico Rosberg - 4 - MGP W01 / 04 - 25 laps, 1:22.777, P8 - 28 laps, 1:22.039, P13

Weather - Warm
Temperatures - Air: 22-25°C / Track: 29-40°C

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER
“Today we saw two sessions where neither the long runs nor the single laps were looking particularly good. We are not up to the speed that we normally are on Fridays and unfortunately our car does not look very good here at the moment. We have to look deeply into the data now to see if there are any specific reasons or if it is due to the character of the circuit. I think our specification is better than we had at Silverstone but we have to make it suit this track. We obviously hope for a better performance tomorrow and Sunday.”

NICO ROSBERG
“It was an interesting day and even though we have taken a small step back with our upgrades, the car seems to work as it should. The track was unexpectedly fast so we had to do some different things with the set-up just to get a feel for it. My lap time wasn’t particularly representative as I didn’t set a time because of the traffic so I think we look to be in our general position behind the frontrunners at the moment. ”

ROSS BRAWN
“We had a busy day working with our revised aero package to find the right direction for qualifying and particularly the race. Both drivers completed some good set-up work but Nico and particularly Michael are not completely happy with our position at the end of today. We have a fairly clear picture of where we expect the prime and option tyres to be positioned for qualifying and the race but we have a lot of work ahead this evening to improve the cars for tomorrow.”

NORBERT HAUG
“Not a perfect first day of practice for us and there is certainly still work to be done tonight in order to improve the set-up of our cars. If the forecast is correct for tomorrow, there is a chance of thunderstorms around lunchtime which could possibly create an exiting qualifying session.”