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While everyone expected Hungary to be hot and humid as in previous years, the weekend delivered cool and damp conditions in practice and qualifying and the first wet race of the year. Practice started well for Clivio and he was happy with the set up of his car on the damp track surface. He was running right up at the top of the time sheets for much of the session until a red flag interrupted it. By the team it went green again the track had dried and several drivers managed to slot in a time just at the end. Clivio was 12 th at the chequered flag. Qualifying – p13 “By the time the qualifying session started the track had completely changed and the car was more difficult to handle. It felt very twitchy and nervous on the bumps – and there are plenty of those here at the Hungaroring. I tried my best but finished up 13th. It was only half a second away from the top 3 which just shows how close it is in GP2.” Race 1 – Saturday, 5 th August “We worked on the car overnight and I was already up to p10 on the first lap and running just behind Yoshimoto and catching him up. On my third lap an alarm came on for water temperature. I tried to carry on for one more lap but that was it. It turns out there was a water leak and everything was becoming overheated, including the engine, so I couldn’t carry on. It was very disappointing as I think we could easily have finished in the top five or six.” Race 2 – Sunday, 6 th August Starting from 25 th on the grid was never going to be easy for Clivio, and torrential rain didn’t improve matters. It was so wet that the race was started under the Safety Car and the first two laps were run behind it which meant that no overtaking was allowed. As Clivio says, “There’s not much you can do in those circumstances. I was hoping for a good fight in the wet, even though the track was very slippery. When the Safety Car went in I made a little way through the field and went to overtake Tahinci on the inside of a corner but he didn’t give me any room to do so and we touched. I spun off and that was another race finished much too early.” Looking forward now to the Istanbul race at the end of the month, Clivio is enthusiastic about the Turkish track’s layout. “It’s got a good mixture of quick and slow corners, and it’s a nice surface. I like it a lot. The famous Turn 9 is a challenge and you have to get through it as quickly as possible for a good lap time. It’s a good feeling every time you get through it. I think we always find our way forward with our set ups every time we run and always find a couple of areas to improve. We haven’t had any luck but we’ve recovered from it in a positive way and, if we start in a good position in Istanbul, we can do well. We always have a good race car and I hope to be in the top ten for qualifying from where we can aim for a podium in the first race and more points in the second.”
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Hungaroring qualifying/race report 
