Lewis Hamilton continued to set the pace at the Hungaroring as he led the way in the second free practice session on Friday afternoon.
The Mercedes AMG PETRONAS driver and reigning World Drivers’ Champion set a best time of 1m23.949s on the soft Pirelli tyre to beat Infiniti Red Bull Racing duo Daniil Kvyat and Daniel Ricciardo.
Kvyat was an impressive second, 0.351s shy of Hamilton’s time, while team-mate Ricciardo was a further 0.151s back.
The Australian’s afternoon was cut short however when the Renault power unit on his Red Bull seemed to expire with twenty minutes still on the clock, although this will not mean another penalty for Ricciardo as it was an old engine and he has a useable engine to put in for the remainder of the weekend.
Nico Rosberg could not match his Mercedes team-mates pace, ending the session only fourth, 0.719s, while Kimi Raikkonen was fifth in the leading Scuderia Ferrari, more than half a second and two places ahead of team-mate Sebastian Vettel.
Separating the two Ferrari drivers was the leading Scuderia Toro Rosso of Carlos Sainz Jr, while Fernando Alonso gave McLaren-Honda a boost by posting the eighth quickest time of the session, albeit 1.803s back from the ultimate pace set by Hamilton.
Completing the top ten in the afternoon were the two Williams Martini Racing drivers, with Valtteri Bottas ahead of Felipe Massa by just 0.039s, while Max Verstappen just missed out on the top ten in the second Toro Rosso by just 0.015s.
Jenson Button was twelfth in the second McLaren, ahead of the leading Lotus of Pastor Maldonado, while Felipe Nasr, freshly confirmed to remain with the Sauber F1 Team in 2016, was fourteenth.
The second Lotus of Romain Grosjean was fifteenth ahead of the second Sauber of Marcus Ericsson, while Roberto Merhi, who stepped back into the Manor F1 Team car for the session after allowing Fabio Leimer track time in FP1, beat team-mate Will Stevens to seventeenth.
Following Sergio Perez’s spectacular crash in the opening session after an apparent suspension failure pitched him into the barrier, the Sahara Force India team decided to skip FP2 while they investigated the cause of the problem. Neither Perez nor team-mate Nico Hulkenberg ventured onto the track as a result.
Hungaroring Free Practice 2 Result
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