Lewis Hamilton is looking to bounce back from "not the greatest session" after he crashed out of second practice on Friday afternoon in Hungary, costing him more than 75 minutes of running.
The Mercedes driver was caught out by a new and unpainted kerb according to technical director Paddy Lowe and although the damage sustained was relatively small, allowing for Hamilton to return to the pits under his own power, the team had to take a cautious approach and check the car over, which meant Hamilton was unable to return to the track.
"Unfortunately, early in FP2 Lewis was caught out by one of the new, unpainted kerbs on the entry to T11, resulting in quite a heavy impact with the barriers," explained Lowe. "This ruled him out of the remainder of the session as the crew assessed the damage to his car.
"The most important thing is that Lewis was unharmed despite the impact. These cars are very stiff and very strong in a pure lateral load, so he went to the medical centre for assessment after a high G-Force reading from the accident data recorder – but luckily the tyre barrier took most of the energy out of the impact.
"There has been some damage to suspension and a few bodywork elements – but this will be easily fixed overnight."
Hamilton apologised to his team for the error and says a strong result on Saturday is still his aim as he looks to bounce back.
"Obviously, not the greatest session for me," he said. "My apologies to the crew for all the hard work they have ahead to strip the car and get it back together.
"Fortunately, I got a good feel for it in the few laps that I did have and the pace is clearly there, so hopefully tomorrow I can make up for the time lost today during the morning session and come back strongly in qualifying."
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