McLaren in better shape in Hungary?

McLaren will try to take advantage of the Budapest track where aero is favored over power to get back into the top ten after a poor result at the British Grand Prix where the MP4-31s missed the points.

The Woking team has reason to be optimistic since Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button had obtained a good result last year on the Hungarian circuit, the double world champion finishing in particular in fifth place.

“The tests (at Silverstone) were encouraging and we optimized the time on track to collect as much data as possible for our engineers in order to improve the development of the MP4-31, explains Éric Boullier, McLaren Team Principal F1. We will obviously not be able to implement everything in Hungary, but we hope to take advantage of the qualities of our package on the unique nature of the Hungaroring route. »

“We were unsuccessful, made some mistakes and suffered from reliability issues, recalls the Frenchman, but we should be able to highlight the package as was the case at certain times of the season with both cars in order to obtain a result that we are capable of on this type of circuit. »

If McLaren is penalized by the performance of Honda's Power Unit on fast circuits, the Japanese unit should struggle less in Budapest.

“Although the Hungaroring circuit is not a track where power is favored, it nevertheless requires energy management on each lap of the race, says Yasuke Hasegawa, F1 project director and executive chief engineer of Honda R&D Co Ltd. It is also a track where overtaking is very difficult and it will be important to achieve good times in qualifying. Our goal remains to reach Q3 and be in a good position to score points. »