Grosjean ends practice on top as Perez crashes

2013 Hungarian Grand Prix third practice

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Romain Grosjean headed the practice times on Saturday morning at the Hungaroring.

But a crash in the closing minutes of the session for Sergio Perez frustrated the attempts of rival drivers to improve their times.

Fernando Alonso was one of the first drivers to tackle the circuit using soft tyres at the end of the session and led the way with a 1’20.898.

Grosjean beat the time and Perez moved up to third with a 1’21.052 which put the McLaren between the two Ferraris. But shortly afterwards he skidded off at turn 11 and damaged the front-left of his car against the barrier. “I just lost the rear,” he told the team before climbing out.

Sebastian Vettel had just moved up to fourth place behind the McLaren having spent much of the session in the lower reaches of the lap times. But with yellow flags out for the final two minutes there were no further improvements.

Lewis Hamilton had been quickest on medium tyres earlier in the session, but a scruffy soft tyre lap left him seven ahead of Mark Webber.

The only driver who failed to set a time was Esteban Gutierrez who suffered an engine problem on his Sauber. Max Chilton was slowest after accidentally activating his pit lane speed limiter while trying to select first gear at one point.

Pos.No.DriverCarBest lapGapLaps
18Romain GrosjeanLotus-Renault1’20.73020
23Fernando AlonsoFerrari1’20.8980.16813
36Sergio PerezMcLaren1’21.0520.32210
41Sebastian VettelRed Bull-Renault1’21.1250.39527
54Felipe MassaFerrari1’21.1510.42114
610Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’21.1580.42819
72Mark WebberRed Bull-Renault1’21.2540.52417
89Nico RosbergMercedes1’21.3560.62623
95Jenson ButtonMcLaren1’21.4990.76915
1015Adrian SutilForce India-Mercedes1’21.5190.78920
117Kimi RaikkonenLotus-Renault1’21.5890.85917
1216Pastor MaldonadoWilliams-Renault1’21.6460.91619
1314Paul di RestaForce India-Mercedes1’21.9631.23321
1411Nico HulkenbergSauber-Ferrari1’21.9641.23421
1519Daniel RicciardoToro Rosso-Ferrari1’22.1801.45018
1618Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso-Ferrari1’22.4231.69319
1717Valtteri BottasWilliams-Renault1’23.0282.29816
1821Giedo van der GardeCaterham-Renault1’23.9753.24521
1920Charles PicCaterham-Renault1’23.9873.25719
2022Jules BianchiMarussia-Cosworth1’24.2983.56820
2123Max ChiltonMarussia-Cosworth1’25.1224.39220

Combined practice times

PosDriverCarFP1FP2FP3Fri/Sat diffTotal laps
1Romain GrosjeanLotus-Renault1’23.1111’21.4171’20.730-0.68780
2Fernando AlonsoFerrari1’23.0991’21.4261’20.898-0.52869
3Sergio PerezMcLaren1’23.5911’22.5291’21.052-1.47773
4Sebastian VettelRed Bull-Renault1’22.7231’21.2641’21.125-0.13980
5Felipe MassaFerrari1’24.2991’21.5441’21.151-0.39370
6Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’24.1571’21.8021’21.158-0.64489
7Mark WebberRed Bull-Renault1’22.9821’21.3081’21.254-0.05483
8Nico RosbergMercedes1’23.5311’21.9911’21.356-0.63591
9Jenson ButtonMcLaren1’23.3701’22.1801’21.499-0.68182
10Adrian SutilForce India-Mercedes1’23.3901’22.3041’21.519-0.78581
11Kimi RaikkonenLotus-Renault1’23.0101’22.0111’21.589-0.42269
12Pastor MaldonadoWilliams-Renault1’23.9111’22.7811’21.646-1.13576
13Paul di RestaForce India-Mercedes1’24.6081’22.5261’21.963-0.56381
14Nico HulkenbergSauber-Ferrari1’24.3141’22.8411’21.964-0.87783
15Daniel RicciardoToro Rosso-Ferrari1’24.3831’23.4111’22.180-1.23183
16Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso-Ferrari1’24.2041’23.3691’22.423-0.94668
17Esteban GutierrezSauber-Ferrari1’24.1191’22.83765
18Valtteri BottasWilliams-Renault1’24.1501’23.6461’23.028-0.61877
19Giedo van der GardeCaterham-Renault1’26.8081’25.0651’23.975-1.0982
20Charles PicCaterham-Renault1’25.8271’24.3251’23.987-0.33881
21Jules BianchiMarussia-Cosworth1’27.6171’25.1431’24.298-0.84579
22Max ChiltonMarussia-Cosworth1’26.6471’25.122-1.52553
23Rodolfo GonzalezMarussia-Cosworth1’28.92725

2013 Hungarian Grand Prix

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Image © Lotus/LAT

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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26 comments on “Grosjean ends practice on top as Perez crashes”

  1. Too hot for the bulls?

  2. Shreyas Mohanty (@)
    27th July 2013, 11:11

    I don’t know what to make of these times – perez ruined a more proper table.

    1. I hope the Fp3 is representative as a Macca fan…..

  3. Chris (@tophercheese21)
    27th July 2013, 11:13

    Grosjean ends practice on top as Perez crashes

    :O :O :O
    What’s this? No Ferrari in the headline?
    Keith must be anti-Ferrari.
    lol.

    1. @tophercheese21 C’mon ! Its not like they topped the session now .

      1. Chris (@tophercheese21)
        27th July 2013, 11:26

        You realise I was having a jab at the Ferrari fans right? lol

          1. @klaas it’s a fair point…

          2. Chris (@tophercheese21)
            27th July 2013, 14:39

            May be lame, but it’s pretty accurate.

  4. Shreyas Mohanty (@)
    27th July 2013, 11:14

    @force-maikel Not really, Perez crashing towards the end brought out the yellow flags preventing the others from pushing at the end!

    1. Hm, but Red Bull did not look all that great before

      1. @shreyasf1fan and @bascb my point exactly

  5. Looks better than yesterday but don’t take it easy yet!

    1. I remember your comment yesterday LOL . Some cool finnish attitude could come in handy like your picture there :P . having said all that I pray Lewis has a decent outing (P1).

  6. Havent seen the footage but, I heard the rear of Perez’s car hit the barrier and may have damaged the gearbox..

    Can anyone add to this?

    1. Shreyas Mohanty (@)
      27th July 2013, 11:18

      @funtyf1 didn’t really look like a gearbox-breaking crash to me..I may be wrong though.

    2. There is a chance of it breaking down , so they have to be careful of it

  7. Why do teams always waste so much track time? They have two sets of tyres available, and hardly anyone manages more than 15 laps. Virtually everyone only put the softs under with 5 minutes to go, and because of Perez’s crash I don’t think anyone managed to get more than one lap in.

    As for the session itself, Grosjean looked very quick throughout, while Hamilton was strong at the end of a long medium-tyre outing, but not very quick on the soft tyres. I only saw the onboard for a couple of corners, but perhaps Mercedes have taken out some front end to protect the rears for the race.

    Ferrari looked in trouble on the medium tyres, but then Fernando put in a very quick lap on the softs. I’m not changing my prediction just yet, though. Last race in Germany we saw Vettel blitz the opposition in FP3, only not to improve in Q3, so perhaps Ferrari really took all the fuel out.

    Raikkonen struggled the entire session, so this could be a good opportunity for Romain to finish ahead of him. Red Bull seemed confident enough of their qualifying speed to restrict Vettel to race simulations on the mediums, but even so their session was pretty low key. Still, there are no points on Saturday morning.

    1. @adrianmorse
      FP3 is almost everytime dedicated to prepare for qualy, so teams try to refine their setups for one lap pace. And by doing so, they are doing short runs with low fuel. That is one of the reasons.

      On the soft tyre: because they are trying to prepare for qualy, and the options are only good for 2 laps (in qualy). So they want to use the softer tyres at the best possible track conditions, at the end of the session. Also if they put them on too early compared to the others, the track will evolve, other cars will go faster, and they cannot really compare their times.

  8. Qualifying is now very interesting: of course Red Bull weren’t focussing on qualifying pace but even so they don’t seem quite so sure at the top as they did yesterday (the race pace is still deeply impressive though). Lotus interestingly are looking a very good bet for qualifying which hasn’t really been the case at any point this season and Alonso isn’t too far off either. Then there’s Mercedes: they are still quick but look nowhere near as dominant over one lap as they have done in the past.

    It’s shaping up to be a very interesting qualifying, the race is still definitely in Red Bull’s favour it appears though.

    1. I think Vettel will still nail it, he’s shown us time and again that he has no trouble eking out that speed at the right moment.

      He might be pushed by Grosjean (or we could see Grosjean in the barriers on a really great lap), and Webber and Hamilton could well be right on it too. But I have confidence he will be able to get it done.

      1. @bascb I think for pole it’s definitely between Vettel and Grosjean right now but I think where the latter may falter is in the final corner: the rear of that Lotus did not seem planted at all through there whereas the Red Bull as ever looks like it’s on rails on low fuel.

  9. I got the impression that RBR were gathering data on how the medium tyres handled a long stint in the hot conditions. Vettel did a lot of consecutive “slowish” laps in the 1’25’ range. My guess is they are confident of their qualifying pace but unsure of their race strategy.

    1. @cynical yes they were doing long run practice, a reason for which was suggested that they already had qualifying nailed. So really they were just focusing on the biggest area for improvement as of course pit strategy will be even more key this weekend (there’s an extra 4 second penalty over the normal pit stop time due to the lower speed limit should you need to 3 stop over a 2).

  10. looks like qualifying is going to be really close today, however it’s great to see that lotus single-lap pace seems to have increased by quite a lot!

  11. I thought drivers couldnt use pit limiter anywhere else except the pitlane? I read once that it was found out that in slow corners drivers would simply activate teh limiter instead of manually slowing down so the use of the button was banned on the track?

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