Vettel has plenty of margin, Leclerc wants rain for qualifying

Sebastian Vettel insists Ferrari has "room to improve" in Hungary after the opening day of running, while teammate Charles Leclerc is hoping rain will disrupt Saturday's qualifying session.

Vettel concluded FP1 in third position snapping at the heels of runner-up Max Verstappen and just 0.166s behind the sessions pace setter Lewis Hamilton.

Friday's second practice, in which Vettel was a lowly 13th, was largely discarded because of the changing weather conditions that limited running.

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While happy with his performance in FP1, the German wasn't sure where the Scuderia's true pace was situated relative to Mercedes and Red Bull.

"It was not bad," Vettel said.

"I think we have some room to improve, struggling a bit to get everything out of the car on that particular lap.

"Hard to say where we are compared to the others, we will see tomorrow.

"I had plenty of margin. I think it’s more important in these conditions that I get the answer for the car rather than the ultimate laptime.

"I think Mercedes look very strong out of the box straight away."

Vettel outpaced Leclerc in both sessions as the Monegasque struggled with his car's balance. The Scuderia's SF90 is predictably at odds with the Hungaroring's tight and twisty layout which requires massive downforce.

"On my side I'm not very happy at the moment in terms of balance of the car, so I need to work quite a lot on that," Leclerc said.

"I think in the wet, I was in better shape. Overall, we are struggling a little bit with the downforce level that we have.

"It's a track where we need a lot of downforce, we knew it would be a difficult track for us, so we need to work and try to improve for tomorrow."

Leclerc hopes more rain will disrupt Saturday's qualifying, and it's possible the heavens will answer the Ferrari driver's call.

"It will be all about trying to anticipate what will happen on the Sunday," he added.

"I think everything will be quite different on Sunday, a lot warmer than it was today, no rain, so yeah, we will see Sunday.

"We'll see tomorrow [Saturday]. Hopefully it will rain."

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