Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Hamilton heads Red Bull pair in FP2

Lewis Hamilton was fastest in another practice session interrupted by a red flag ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The championship leader set a best time of 1:23.949 to head Daniil Kvyat by 0.351s. The two Red Bulls looked very competitive during FP2, with Daniel Ricciardo also setting strong lap times on his long run before becoming the cause of a stoppage with 20 minutes remaining.

Having been running quicker than Lewis Hamilton on soft tyres on high fuel, Ricciardo came to a halt at Turn 11 after a spectacular engine failure. The power unit was not Ricciardo's race engine, but team principal Christian Horner says it will leave him having to take a penalty later in the season.

Ricciardo ended the session in third place, half a second off Hamilton and 0.2s clear of Nico Rosberg who struggled to put together a consistent lap. Kimi Raikkonen ended FP2 in fifth place but was over 1.1s slower than Hamilton's fastest time.

Carlos Sainz was sixth for Toro Rosso ahead of Sebastian Vettel, with the four-time world champion struggling to get to grips with his car on Friday. A spin at Turn 12 prevented Vettel from setting a representative fast time, and he then spun again at Turn 1 on high fuel.

Fernando Alonso was eighth quickest as McLaren enjoyed an encouraging day, finishing FP2 1.8s off the pace. Racing director Eric Boullier said ahead of the session it had been a smooth start to the weekend which had gone slightly better than expected at a track where McLaren should be more competitive than recent races.

Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa rounded out the top ten for Williams, which is traditionally slower in Friday practice compared to its true qualifying pace.

Both Force India drivers sat out the second practice session following Sergio Perez's accident in FP1. Perez crashed heavily as a result of a failure on the right rear corner of his car, with the car rolling over after one of the front wheels caught under the chassis following the first impact with the barrier. With the team still to understand the cause of the problem, both Perez and team-mate Nico Hulkenberg were kept in the garage.

Click here for Eric Silbermann's Hungarian Grumpy Preview

Click here for a gallery of Sergio Perez's crash in FP1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix

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Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Laps
01	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:23.949	36
02	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull	1:24.300	29
03	Daniel Ricciardo	Red Bull	1:24.451	16
04	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:24.668	34
05	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1:25.134	30
06	Carlos Sainz	Toro Rosso	1:25.599	37
07	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1:25.660	26
08	Fernando Alonso	McLaren	1:25.752	31
09	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	1:25.881	35
10	Felipe Massa	Williams	1:25.920	31
11	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso	1:25.935	19
12	Jenson Button	McLaren	1:25.994	32
13	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus	1:26.090	36
14	Felipe Nasr	Sauber	1:26.379	36
15	Romain Grosjean	Lotus	1:26.442	39
16	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber	1:26.831	29
17	Roberto Merhi	Manor	1:29.113	29
18	Will Stevens	Manor	1:29.115	28
19	Sergio Perez	Force India		0
20	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India		0

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.