Hungaroring, FP1: Hamilton heads Mercedes 1-2

Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton headed a Mercedes in the opening practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix, outpacing team-mate Valtteri BOttas by just under a tenth of a second as Racing Point again looked competitive, with Sergio Pérez and Lance Stroll claiming third and fourth place respectively.

The closest rival to the Mercedes-powered quartet was Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo who finished over 1.1 seconds off Hamilton’s pace. The Australian finished ahead of the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc, while Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was eighth, almost 1.5 seconds behind the top Mercedes.

Verstappen set the initial pace on hard tyres but the Mercedes drivers soon emerged on soft compound Pirelli rubber and immediately took the top two spots, which they then held for the remainder of the session.

There was a brief lull as the teams made changes and handed back their P140 tyres and then the Mercedes split its drivers Hamilton switching to hard tyres and Bottas taking on mediums.

Bottas quickly stole P1 with a lap of 1:16.089s but the position was reclaimed soon after by Hamilton who moved back of the top of the order with a time of 1:16.003 on the white-banded compound.

Perez ended the session 0.527s behind Hamilton, with the second Racing Point of Lance Stroll a further 0.437s back in fourth place. With Ricciardo fifth ahead of the Ferraris and Verstappen, ninth place in the session went to McLaren’s Lando Norris and Esteban Ocon rounded out the top 10 for Renault.

Eleventh place was taken by Carlos Sainz in the second McLaren, with Haas’ Kevin Magnussen in 12thplace. That left P13 to Alex Albon in the second Red Bull, 1.724s adrift of Hamilton.

It was a largely trouble-free session, though, Pierre Gasly took no part as AlphaTauri due to investigation of date that showed a potential engine problem.