Live from Budapest with Charles Pic

Charles, another very good qualifying session, two tenths of a second ahead of Timo Glock.

«Yes, for sure. Here, with tire wear, it’s important to find the right compromise between qualifying and the race. It’s certain that we found what was needed for qualifying, so I’m quite happy with what we managed to do. The qualifying went well. We had a great qualifying session.

Saturday morning was more complicated. Was it because you were conducting simulations with a full tank of gas, or was there another reason?

No, Saturday morning was a bit complicated on my first set on mediums, but with the softs, it went well since I finished three-tenths ahead of Timo (Glock).

Exactly, we see that you are increasingly outpacing him in qualifications. That was already the case with him in Germany last week, and it’s again the case here in Hungary. What explains this rise in performance?

It’s simply that with each race, I get to know the team and the car better and better. In every race, I make progress. I know that I still have a lot to learn, and so I improve gradually. So with each race, it gets a bit easier, which in turn improves my performance.

And the gap with the Caterham?

«It has remained pretty stable, but I don’t think we’ll be able to lower it significantly. I think now it will stay like this until the end of the season. After that, I think the gap will be smaller in the race tomorrow than it was today in qualifying. We also have to consider tire degradation. So, we might have a good card to play on this. »

And now, what’s the summer break plan?

I’m returning to Paris tomorrow evening. After that, I’m going on a family vacation in the south of France for a week and in Corsica for another week. So, I will be completely off for two weeks. Then I’ll spend a week at the factory, followed by a week in the McLaren simulator in Woking before heading to Belgium.

From our correspondent in Budapest