Max Verstappen elected to sacrifice running in Friday practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix as he was "super limited" on tyres. F1 is trialling an 'Alternative Tyre Allocation' at the Hungaroring, whereby the total number of sets allocated to each driver is down to 11 from 13, with a different compound being mandated in each segment qualifying. As such, Verstappen, and Lewis Hamilton were among those out of place on the time sheets in the dry second practice, with the current championship leader only 11th and the Mercedes driver 16th. Red Bull introduced a raft of upgrades to the RB19 for the weekend, though it lost the opportunity to collect data in FP1 as Sergio Perez crashed out in the opening moments of the session before rain fell.
Verstappen's reflections on Friday
Asked for a first reaction to the upgrades after FP2, Verstappen conceded: "It's very hard to comment on and we will look at the data to see if everything is correlating well because we haven't actually used a lot of tyres. "With this new format, you're just super limited with the tyres that you can use and I didn't want to use them to have a bit more of a better preparation [for the weekend.] "It is a bit of a shame, there are so many people around and basically you don't run a lot - so we will have to see what we can do to improve because we're literally just saving tyres, which I don't think is the correct thing. "But from our side, the car didn't feel too bad: a bit of understeer, but I went out again. Also, on the long run, we looked quite competitive. "It is a bit difficult to say on the one-lap pace, but I think overall the car is still strong. "We want to be the quickest, but at the moment, we first need to do a little bit more running with more tyres to get a bit more of a better understanding."
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