Hamilton tops first Hungary practice as Mercedes dominates

Lewis Hamilton set the pace in the opening Formula 1 practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix, outpacing Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas despite using a harder tyre.

The reigning world champion set the fastest lap of the session with less than 25 minutes to go using the hard tyres, eclipsing Bottas’s time on mediums by 0.086 seconds.

The Mercedes drivers were half a second clear of Sergio Perez’s Racing Point, which used soft tyres to set its best time.

Lance Stroll made it a three-four for Racing Point, which arrived in Hungary knowing its car’s brake ducts are subject to a protest from Renault after last week’s Styrian Grand Prix.

Daniel Ricciardo was fifth-fastest for Renault on the medium tyres, ahead of the Ferraris of Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc, who also used the yellow-marked tyres. All three were more than a second off the pace set by Hamilton.

Max Verstappen was the first of the Red Bulls in eighth, using the soft tyre. He was 1.4 seconds slower than Hamilton managed on the hards.

Verstappen aborted an earlier “bad” run on the hards when there was rain in the air, despite his team asking him to continue even if the run was “sub-optimal”.

Later in the session he was frustrated with the Williams of Nicholas Latifi, which got in his way in the final sector. Verstappen pulled alongside to gesticulate with the rookie at the penultimate corner, then did so again at Turn 1.

When running on the soft tyre towards the end of the session, Verstappen’s engineer told him the degradation was high, a trend that appeared to be the case for several cars in the cool temperatures.

Another driver in tyre trouble was Perez, who destroyed his front-right with a massive lock-up at Turn 1 and had to return to the pits to discard it.

Alex Albon was only 13th in the second Red Bull, also using the soft tyre. He had a lap time deleted for running wide at Turn 11 earlier in the session, but that was slower than the best lap he eventually set.

Speaking after the session, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told Sky that the outfit was “trying a few bits and pieces” in the session and it was thus “difficult to get a fair reading”.

“You’ve got to explore all areas, so that’s why there were a few test items on the car this morning that we wanted to get some data on, and we’ll converge a bit more back to normality this afternoon,” Horner said.

Lando Norris and Esteban Ocon completed the top 10, with Norris’s McLaren team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr close behind in 11th.

Alfa Romeo reserve driver Robert Kubica was the slowest of the drivers to set a time, 3.1 seconds adrift of Hamilton’s best.

The Pole had a low-speed spin half an hour into the session, losing the back end at Turn 1 as he exited the pits, saying he lost concentration because he was watching his mirrors.

Pierre Gasly didn’t run in FP1, due to an “anomaly” with his Honda engine that required time consuming “physical checks” to be carried out.

Practice 1 Results