F1: Leclerc tops 2nd Practice for Hungarian GP

In a session that saw drivers testing various race strategies, Charles Leclerc turned the fastest lap in his #16 Ferrari to top Practice 2 for the Hungarian GP.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Leclerc’s lap of 1m17.686s  nipped the McLaren of Lando Norris by just 0.015s.

Pierre Gasly was 3rd for Alpine, 0.232s behind the Ferrari.

Yuki Tsunoda in the AlphaTauri and Esteban Ocon in the 2nd Alpine rounded out the top-5.

Red Bull remain an unknown – are they going to be as dominant here as they have been elsewhere? The good news for the team is that Perez got out relatively swiftly after wadding up his Red Bull in FP1, managing 13 laps in the end.

Championship leader Max Verstappen was only 11th, but he ran the same set of soft tires the entire session and his car appeared to be laden with fuel.

“Difficult to say anything about upgrades after this day, we will check the data later to see if the correlation is correct,” said Verstappen.

“The session was mainly about saving tires with an eye on the format of qualifying. We have to see how we can improve that because I don’t think this is how it [Q1, Q2 and Q3 tire allocation requirements] should be.”

Similarly, the two Mercedes drivers spent the entire session working on race setups.

Fernando Alonso was 8th and said afterward, “It was a mixed day with some rain and windy conditions at the Hungaroring.

“We lost time in FP1 and didn’t get much track time in, but it was the same for everyone. I think we maximized FP2 and collected a lot of useful data, particularly in preparation for race conditions.

“Generally, I am quite happy with today, and we’ll see what we can do tomorrow in qualifying with hopefully dry conditions.”

Looking ahead to FP3 tomorrow morning, one last hour where the indications are most teams will focus on single lap pace. Then comes qualifying, with those mandatory tire allocations in play.

Practice 2 Results