Gasly sets the pace in Budapest

Pierre Gasly
Pierre Gasly

Pierre Gasly has set a target for his rivals to match by taking the top spot in this morning's Free Practice session in Budapest, setting the pace for almost the entire session to come home almost half a second ahead of Alex Lynn and Sergey Sirotkin.

The Red Bull tester stopped the clocks at 1:27.138 a third of the way through the session, beating his own top time to extend the gap back to his rivals in scorching conditions at the Hungaroring: with track temperatures increasing throughout there was little chance for the rest of the field to improve their laptimes, and attention was turned to fine tuning the cars for tomorrow's race.

The entire grid were straight out on track as the session commenced under blue skies: an overnight shower made little impact as the circuit was completely dry, and earlier clouds were burnt away as temperatures soared. Gasly set the first competitive lap 7 minutes in before improving on it two laps later: Sirotkin briefly claimed the top spot but was knocked back off the perch by Gasly when he completed his lap right behind the Russian, and the fight for first was over, with Lynn the only man to improve substantially in the second half of the session by claiming P2 with 2 minutes remaining.

A number of drivers went wide at Turns 1 and 11 as they looked for the limits, but the only incident of note was when Sergio Canamasas spun at Turn 12 before getting back underway once again: the Spaniard finished the session in the Top ten behind Raffaele Marciello, Nobuharu Matsushita, Norman Nato, Oliver Rowland, Antonio Giovinazzi and Luca Ghiotto, all of whom will be looking to close the gap to Gasly in this afternoon's Qualifying session.

Budapest, Hungary – Free Practice

Pos

Driver

Team

Laptime

Laps

1.

Pierre Gasly

PREMA Racing

1:27.138

20

2.

Alex Lynn

DAMS

1:27.595

18

3.

Sergey Sirotkin

ART Grand Prix

1:27.656

18

4.

Raffaele Marciello

RUSSIAN TIME

1:27.860

20

5.

Nobuharu Matsushita

ART Grand Prix

1:27.878

20

6.

Norman Nato

Racing Engineering

1:27.951

23

7.

Oliver Rowland

MP Motorsport

1:28.093

19

8.

Antonio Giovinazzi

PREMA Racing

1:28.255

19

9.

Luca Ghiotto

Trident

1:28.270

19

10.

Sergio Canamasas

Carlin

1:28.416

18

11.

Artem Markelov

RUSSIAN TIME

1:28.420

20

12.

Jordan King

Racing Engineering

1:28.453

19

13.

Marvin Kirchhöfer

Carlin

1:28.460

18

14.

Arthur Pic

Rapax

1:28.480

21

15.

Nicholas Latifi

DAMS

1:28.570

19

16.

Gustav Malja

Rapax

1:28.658

23

17.

Sean Gelael

Pertamina Campos Racing

1:28.730

21

18.

Mitch Evans

Pertamina Campos Racing

1:28.778

18

19

Daniel de Jong

MP Motorsport

1:28.782

20

20.

Philo Paz Armand

Trident

1:29.204

22

21.

Nabil Jeffri

Arden International

1:29.514

20

22.

Jimmy Eriksson

Arden International

1:29.777

20

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