HUNGARIAN GP – Charles Leclerc fastest by a hundredth in second practice from Lando Norris
Charles Leclerc was fastest in the second practice session for this weekends Hungarian Grand Prix. The Ferrari driver set a 17.686 on the soft tyre which out him a hundredth and a half ahead of the McLaren of Lando Norris, following -a wet first practice. Leclerc set his fastest time on the soft tyre just before the switch to the long runs.
Pierre Gasly was third with Yuki Tsunoda splitting the Alpines, the Alpha Tauri driver was two tenths slower than his former teammate. While his current teammate was a tenth behind Tsunoda in fifth, McLaren and Alpine appears to have the pace once again this weekend.
This weekend the sport is trialling the Alternative Tyre Allocation qualifying which means each driver has two fewer sets of dry tyres – teams ran different run plans to their normal Practice Two format of new soft tyre low fuel runs and resulted in quite a jumbled up top ten and leaves plenty of mystery going into qualifying Saturday.
Nico Hulkenberg put his Haas sixth going a quarter of a second ahead of Valtteri Bottas, Fernando Alonso spilt the Alfa Romeo’s. The two time champion was two hundredths behind Bottas and three thousandths faster than Guanyu Zhou. This perhaps further giving evidence that Aston Martin maybe slipping away.
This weekend marks twenty years since Alonso took his first win for Renault, now Alpine, in Budapest, and a decade since his last win for Ferrari in Hockenheim in 2013. Alonso’s fellow Spaniard Carlos Sainz rounded out the top ten, going seven hundredths behind Zhou.
It was a rare session for 2023 where neither Red Bull’s were in the top ten, Max Verstappen going eleventh fastest. Although the two time champion had saved a soft tyre for his closing run it didn’t result in any improvement, but he was on a used set of tyres. Sergio Perez was the same on his medium run resulting in him staying in eighteenth.
Perez appears the driver under the most pressure at the moment, his ambition of challenging team-mate Verstappen for the championship has collapsed as his season has imploded following a series of errors.
Ricciardo has said his dream is to go well enough in the Alpha Tauri to again earn a seat at Red Bull. Perez, who has a Red Bull contract for 2024, said on Thursday that Ricciardo’s return “doesn’t change anything” for him, insisting that his future was “in my hands”.
Lance Stroll was twelfth, Aston Martin who in the early part of the season looked to be Red Bull’s closest challenger, was four hundredths behind Verstappen. Alex Albon was thirteen going eight thousandths ahead of Kevin Magnussen.
Mercedes were another team not to have done a real attempt on the soft tyre predominantly focusing on the mediums, that left Lewis Hamilton sixteenth and George Russell twentieth. However they will be likely fighting with Aston Martin for a place in Q3 tomorrow.
Looking at the race runs, Red Bull and Ferrari chose the soft tyres for their race runs, and although Leclerc started strongly, Verstappen was comfortably quicker over a series of laps.
Kevin Magnussen was fifteenth ahead of Hamilton, Logan Sargeant, Perez, Oscar Piastri and Russell.