Hamilton remains on top in Hungary

It was a good day at the office for Lewis Hamilton today as he was consistently faster than his rivals.

The McLaren driver set the fastest time of both free practice sessions and found a strong pace on the super soft rubber.

He beat Alonso by two tenths of a second. Button was third, with Webber fourth and Vettel fifth. The top five was covered by half a second.

Sixth-placed Massa was a full second off the pace of Hamilton. He was followed by Rosberg, Schumacher, di Resta and Sutil.

What happened during the session :

Alguersuari, Ricciardo and d’Ambrosio left the pitlane as soon as the light went green. More cars filtered through and the action resumed at the Hungaroring.

Teams were pretty keen on getting some early running as rain was a threat at the start of the session.

Sergio Pérez set the early benchmark but was toppled down the order by Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa. Vettel then stormed at the front as Alonso and Button were on a flying lap. Both went faster than the Red Bull driver.

Vettel responded and moved up to 2nd, less than a tenth behind Alonso. But then Button upped the pace and took over at the front, as Massa had a spin at Turn 12. Twenty minutes in the session, Button was leading from Alonso, Vettel, Massa, Hamilton and Webber.

Alonso was still on track and found enough improvement to retake the lead, 0.021s ahead of Button.

Things settled a bit afterwards as everyone was working through his program.

Ferrari was the first team to send its drivers out on the super soft compound. As Massa made a mistake on his run, his teammate Alonso made it stick and lowered his benchmark by eight tenths. The Spaniard completed a few more laps before pitting but was unable to further improve.

Vettel and the McLarens left the pits shortly after the midway point for another run. While the Red Bull driver stick with the soft tyre and worked on his race pace, both McLarens took the super soft tyre. Button slotted right behind Alonso as his teammate took over at the front, 0.2s ahead of the Ferrari driver.

Super soft tyres helped Rosberg to 5th. Vettel’s first attempt yielded him no better than the 5th fastest time, 0.5s down on Hamilton.

Drivers then focused on longer runs on the super soft tyre, gathering data on its performance and degradation.

Hamilton lapped consistently and strongly in the final part of the session, seemingly having the edge on his rivals. The Briton stayed in the lead and concluded the day on top. He was faster than Alonso, Button, Webber and Vettel.