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F1 Mid Season Test - Hungary 2017 Day One

The Hungaroring circuit in Hungary played host to a couple of days worth of F1 testing. A variety of young drivers had their first go in 2017 F1 machinery such as the championship leader of F2, Charles Leclerc. He was rewarded by Ferrari for the impressive run of form in the lower formula which has been recognised as the level below F1 in the Grand Prix ladder. Others include fellow F2 racers Gustav Malja (driving for Sauber) and Santino Ferrucci (driving for Haas) and Nicholas Latifi who was driving for Force India. Lafiti was sharing his driving duties with DTM driver Lucas Auer swapping a touring car for a single seater for part of the day.

There was a handful of current F1 drivers performing at times during the day. Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas provided his services in the morning as he was performing tyre work for Pirelli as Research and Development on the tyre compounds. Another was Max Verstappen which was doing some testing for Red Bull. His running was limited however due to some technical problems in his RB13 car in the morning which shows why he ended up 11th in the results from day one. Another was Lance Stroll who had a relatively problem free day clocking up a total of 137 laps in which only Bottas achieved more.

So as Bottas was doing work with Pirelli, the driver for Mercedes was George Russell who is part of their young driver program. He clocked up a total of over 100 laps in, like Leclerc, what was his first F1 test session. 

This is only day one though. Day Two comes tomorrow and will feature Robert Kubica as everyone will see how he performs with his ambitions to return to Formula 1 after the horrible rally accident in 2011. Other drivers expected to perform on day two include Pierre Gasly, who has tested for Red Bull at Bahrain in April, the duo of Mazepin and Auer from Force India who, once again will share duties at Force India, Italian F2 racer Luca Ghiotto, who will make his F1 debut at the test and Lando Norris; the 17 year old British driver who is part of the McLaren Young Driver program. 

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