Tsunoda reveals costly gearbox damage after FP1 crash

Yuki Tsunoda has confirmed that his AlphaTauri suffered gearbox damage as a result of the accident that caused a red flag midway through Friday morning's first practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“I’m really disappointed with today, I made a mistake in FP1 and it meant that I’ve lost more than a session’s worth of running," he said.

"Just two corners I was losing a lot in high speed and tried to improve myself and went into the wall," he said. "The rear of the car felt very nervous, especially in high-speed corners,

"I was losing a lot of time there compared to Pierre. I was trying to improve in those areas, but I lost control of the car and I went into the wall," he said.

• Read also: Bottas and Hamilton on top in Hungary second practice

"I shouldn’t do that, and almost already one-and-a-half, almost one session completely gone. Have to learn from it."

Although the incident looked relatively innocuous at the time, it took the team several hours to repair and meant that the Japanese driver missed all but the last five minutes of FP2, allowing him time for just one push lap.

"I think all is my fault, and the mechanics did a really good job," he said. "Unfortunately, the gearbox was damaged, and the team had to work really hard to get my car ready for the afternoon.

"The mechanics did a really good job getting the car fixed before the end of the session, so I was able to get one lap in during FP2.

"It was really helpful for both the engineers and I to get this, so we can review the data tonight," he added. "Even one lap. So yes, I think it was really hard work for the mechanics and really appreciative of them."

"Yuki was having quite a good FP1 up until the spin, which was unfortunate for him," commented chief race engineer Jonathan Eddolls. "He sustained some damage to the car which was fairly extensive and took quite a long time to repair.

"The mechanics did an excellent job getting the car back out before the end of FP2 and Yuki was able to get one push lap in before the end of the session.

"He completed this lap on the softs, however he ended up in the mix of cars doing long-runs, so we can’t consider his time representative of the real performance.

"It was always going to be difficult getting that lap in but thanks to the mechanics’ hard work we were able to check that everything on the car is good and it will also allow Yuki to analyse the set-up changes we made to the car after FP1."

The good news is that Tsunoda's team mate Pierre Gasly demonstrated the pace of the car at the Hungaroring, ending both FP1 and FP2 in the top six.

"[Pierre] showed a very good performance on all of the tyres and particularly on the short-run, where the car seems to be in a good place," noted Eddolls.

"For sure, the race will be difficult, especially if we have these very high temperatures as it’s very hard on the tyres

“I’m very pleased with today," said Gasly. "Particularly after Silverstone where we struggled a bit. It’s good to see that we’ve got the performance back again," he said.

"The car felt good even in these really hot conditions, so we’ll see how we do tomorrow.

"I think it might rain overnight, and also in the morning, so we may have different track conditions tomorrow. The pace of the car seems to be good though, so we can go into tomorrow with confidence.”

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