FP2: Hamilton puts McLaren on top again in Hungary

A heavy shower with 42 minutes of the second free practice session still to run ended an entertaining battle for supremacy at the Hungaroring on Friday afternoon. But though the times were as tight as ever it was interesting that Lewis Hamilton still had the upper hand for McLaren.

Hamilton lapped in 1m 21.995s, for the second time in the day being in a time bracket all on his own, while Kimi Raikkonen got closest with 1m 22.180s for dark horse Lotus. Bruno Senna made up for the time lost handing his Williams FW34 over to Valtteri Bottas to run third with 1m 22.253s, with the Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso next up on 1m 22.417s and 1m 22.582s.

Jenson Button was sixth in the second McLaren with 1m 22.747s ahead of Paul di Resta in the leading Force India on 1m 22.794s. Sebastian Vettel was only eighth for Red Bull with 1m 22.824s, with Lotus’s Romain Grosjean rounding out those under 1m 23s with 1m 22.922s.

Michael Schumacher was Mercedes’ lead runner again with 1m 23.160s but had team mate Nico Rosberg right with him on 1m 23.164s. The veteran was one of the first to go out later when the track was at its worst, but damaged his W03 mildly after aquaplaning into the tyre wall at Turn 12.

Pastor Maldonado was 12th in the second Williams on 1m 23.337s, with Nico Hulkenberg taking over his Force India from Jules Bianchi to post 1m 23.713s. Red Bull’s Mark Webber was only 14th on 1m 23.814s with Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi next on 1m 23.841s. Then came the Toro Rossos with Jean-Eric Vergne ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, with 1m 24.328s to 1m 24.345s. Sauber’s Sergio Perez followed them with 1m 24.623s.

Caterham reverted Vitaly Petrov to the Valencia set-up in a bid to find pace and the Russian lapped his CT-01 in 1m 24.823s as Heikki Kovalainen with the latest configuration couldn’t better 1m 25.220s. Then there was a big gap to the final four, where Timo Glock lapped his Marussia in 1m 27.104s to head Pedro de la Rosa’s HRT on 1m 27.106s, team mate Charles Pic on 1m 27.185s and Narain Karthikeyan on 1m 27.822s in the other HRT.

Even before the rain there were plenty of minor incidents, with Massa, Schumacher, De la Rosa, Alonso, Di Resta, Maldonado, Vergne and Kovalainen going off road at times. The rain also upset a lot of the day’s planned running, obliging teams to switch from the medium Pirellis to the soft sooner than they had planned. (Formula1.com)