Friday (24) at the Hungarian F1 GP featured a strong Ferrari and an as-yet unconvincing Mercedes. Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who leads the Drivers’ Championship with a 45-point cushion, was not a key protagonist in the opening practice sessions, ending the day complaining about the balance of the German squad’s car, particularly during qualifying simulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In FP1, Antonelli sat out to make way for Frederik Vesti, who completed the session with the seventh-fastest time. In the second practice session, the Italian driver could only manage 13th and reported several difficulties in setting a competitive time on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, Antonelli’s run was interrupted by the red flag caused by Franco Colapinto’s crash at Turn 14. Later, he was hampered by traffic as well as the car’s balance, suffering from rear-locking issues. As a result, he already foresees a significant gap between Mercedes and the front-runners heading into qualifying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It was a tricky first day here in Budapest, and I think that was the case for everyone. I sat out FP1, with Fred doing a good job in the car. When I took over the cockpit in FP2, I struggled with the car balance. That was even more evident on the push laps. I had to abort my first attempt because of the red flag. After the restart, I tried to get a lap in, but couldn’t complete it due to traffic and because I was struggling with rear locking,” said Antonelli, who found slightly more cause for optimism in the long runs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The race pace was better, and I think we managed to get the tires into a more suitable working window. We also gathered plenty of data and learnings that we will analyze overnight,” he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Antonelli then stressed the importance of focusing on FP3 for Mercedes to make progress and get properly into the fight for pole position in Hungary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I’m looking forward to getting back on track tomorrow. FP3 will be important to try to get the car into a better place and join the fight for pole. We know it won’t be easy, considering the gap we saw today, but we will give it our best shot,” the Italian driver concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
GRANDE PR\u00caMIO<\/strong> is covering all the track action from the Hungarian GP, the 11th round of the 2026 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Andrea Kimi Antonelli endured a difficult Friday (24) in Hungary and complained about the balance of the Mercedes on push laps. On the flip side, he was encouraged by the long-run pace<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1020310406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"42wp_featured_image_caption":"Andrea Kimi Antonelli","42wp_featured_image_credits":"F1","42wp_featured_video":"","42wp_featured_image_hidden":false,"42wp_authors_list":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[19,17,16],"42wp_author":[48],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-george-russell","tag-mercedes","42wp_author-giovani-danjo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1020310406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329"},{"taxonomy":"42wp_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grandepremio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/42wp_author?post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}