After the first two races of the season, the Marussia Manor Racing GP3 Team this week took part in the first of the two mid-season tests at the Hungaroring in Budapest.
The team used this test to develop the set-up of the Marussia Manor Racing GP3 car as well as to continue understanding the behaviour of the Pirelli tyres and improve the team’s qualifying performance. During the first test day all three drivers Adrian Quaife-Hobbs, Rio Haryanto and Matias Laine completed a total of 127 laps between them, acquiring plenty of valuable data for the team. Adrian was always in the top 12 and finished yesterday’s afternoon session in third position with a best time of 1:38.487 - within a tenth of the leader - demonstrating that the team has good pace. Rio ended up 24th in both sessions and Matias was 29th in the morning and 23rd in the afternoon.
Today’s second and last day of testing in Budapest was useful for Marussia Manor Racing to continue achieving more valuable information that will be used during the forthcoming races. Adrian’s lap times were indicating progress for the team and he improved his time to 1:37.849. He ended the morning 5th and only three tenths away from the best time. Rio was 12th and Matias 19th, just over half a second away from the top of the timesheets. In the afternoon it started to rain and Adrian finished 12th, Matias 16th and Rio was 24th, adding a further 116 laps to the teams tally.
The Marussia Manor Racing GP3 team will be back on track testing again in Valencia on the 16th and 17th of June, before going back to racing a week later, from the 24-26 June at the Valencia Street Circuit in Spain.
Pete Sliwinski, Team Manager
“It has been a very useful test, and one that we needed before returning to the racing. Our start to the season hasn’t been the best, and certainly not what we expected, but luckily this is still only the beginning and we still have time to react and get better. The good news is that we know we have the pace and here in Budapest we have seen it again. Now we just need to focus more during qualifying to start the race in a good position and fight at the top of the grid.”
Rio Haryanto
“It has been a very constructive two days here in Budapest. We needed to make sure we spent some time understanding how to improve and we have made progress for sure. We still have another two days of testing in Valencia so I’m sure that when we are back racing we will be stronger.”
Adrian Quaife-Hobbs
“We came into this test looking to improve our qualifying performance, and we did. We started the day on our baseline set-up and gradually worked away at it and we think we have found a good solution now. I was P3 at the end of the day yesterday, and today we were also in the top positions. We still have another two days of testing in Valencia before the next race so I’m sure we can further fine tune our set-up.”
Matias Laine
“It’s always positive to have some testing days during the season. I think we have done a good job here in Budapest. Yesterday it wasn’t my best day, but today we found a good set-up. It started raining in the afternoon, and that didn’t really help us, but I am really happy with what we have done and I feel comfortable driving the car. It will be good to carry on working on all this at the Valencia test in two weeks’ time.”
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