Red Bull set the pace in Hungary

Practice for the Hungarian GP kicked off this morning under clear skies.

Despite some early rain, the track was dry when the light turned green.

Replacing Tonio Liuzzi at the wheel of the Force India this morning, Paul di Resta was the first out on track. He was followed by teammate Adrian Sutil and HRT’s Yamamoto.

As is becoming the norm on Friday morning practices, most of the field did a single installation lap before pitting. A few drivers, including Vettel and Schumacher did a two-lap installation run.

As the track was very dirty and dusty, no one was eager to lap early on and waited for others to do the cleaning work.

Returning to the scene of his life-threatening accident last year, Felipe Massa was the first to post a time on the board, approximately 20 minutes through the session.

Sutil had no problem to go faster than the Brazilian and set a new reference time of 1’26’’143 – twelve seconds quicker than Massa’s.

Both HRTs of Yamamoto and Senna split them some time later. After thirty minutes, Sutil was leading from Alguersuari, Senna, Yamamoto and Massa.
The five of them were the only ones with a time on the board.

Mark Webber got going shortly after that and he immediately put his RB6 on top of the timesheet with a 1’24’’856. His teammate didn’t wait long to join in the fun and quickly joined Webber at the front. As they approached the halfway point of the session, Vettel lowered the target time down to 1’21’’275.

He was then leading from Webber by 0.435s. Michael Schumacher was up into third in the Mercedes with Rosberg fourth and De la Rosa fifth. Robert Kubica also moved up some places to slot into third, while Alonso took fifth.

Webber retook the lead with just over thirty minutes remaining in the session. Vettel couldn’t match him at first but was just one tenth of a second slower than his teammate. And both of them were one second clear of the rest of the pack, led by Renault’s Kubica and McLaren’s Button.

Vettel then set a 1’20’’976 to edge Webber out of the lead. He subsequently had a moment at the exit of the chicane and pitted at the end of this lap to have the underside of his car checked.

The final part of the session was mainly dedicated to some high fuel runs and there were few improvements. It was a Red Bull one-two as the session ended, with Vettel holding onto top spot ahead of Webber.

Kubica was third fastest, a full second down on Vettel. Jenson Button was fourth fastest for McLaren Mercedes. Rubens Barrichello was an encouraging fifth for Williams. De la Rosa, Alonso, Rosberg, Schumacher and Hulkenberg completed the top ten.

Early pacesetter Felipe Massa finished the session 12th fastest, two seconds down on Vettel.

Paul di Resta set the 15th fastest time while championship leader Lewis Hamilton was down in 18th place.