Hungarian GP 2011 – Hamilton Dominates Free practice 1 and 2

Lewis Hamilton continued to set the ultimate pace in second practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix as the McLaren man led the way with a 1m21.018s lap ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari.

In a session dominated by long runs and analysis on the relative degradation of Pirelli’s supersoft option and harder prime tyres, Hamilton went fastest on an early short run with his red-walled tyres 50 minutes in and was never headed thereafter, though it was Red Bull that looked strong in the late soft-tyre analysis.

Hamilton’s team-mate Jenson Button was third quickest ahead of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bulls, proving if nothing else that the weekend promises to be very close between the top three teams once again.

An initial threat of a shower prompted the teams to fire out of the pits early in P2 and very quickly Hamilton was back to the top of the timesheets with a time of 1m22.969s.

But that rain which spattered the back of the grandstands down near Turn 1, never materialised and things soon returned to normal as everyone concentrated on their long runs.

Nevertheless the early burst of activity saw Alonso move to the top of the times with a 1m22.297s that remained the benchmark until after the halfway point in the session as drivers worked on their prime tyre analysis.

At this point though the order was Alonso, from Vettel, Button, Massa and Hamilton.

Ferrari was the first front-running team to switch to the red-walled super soft Pirelli option tyre and Felipe Massa threatened to go fastest until the Brazilian ran wide at Turn 5 with 40 minutes of the session to go.

His team-mate Alonso wasn’t far behind though and the Spaniard fired in a rapid 1m21.259s lap.

This triggered a brace of option runs and Hamilton, visibly enthusiastic in his work on track, moved right back to the top with a 1m21.018s.

Button then moved to third ahead of Webber, fastest of the Red Bulls, who was only fourth, ahead of world championship leading team-mate Sebastien Vettel.

That’s how things stayed as drivers settled down to do more evaluating of the extent of the super-soft’s operating window – or most of them at least. Ominously though, it was Red Bull that looked most competitive during this phase.

Behind Massa, who ended up sixth fastest, was Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes cars, which were neither close to the top three teams or particularly threatened by Force India immediately behind it.

Force India’s drivers therefore completed the top ten with Paul di Resta out-pacing Adrian Sutil.

Further down the field, notable times included that of Jarno Trulli which was half a second quicker than Lotus team-mate Heikki Kovalainen and Daniel Ricciardo who was a similar amount faster than HRT veteran Vitantonio Liuzzi.

AUTOSPORT

Free Practice 1 Results:

Free Practice 2 Results: