Leclerc crashes, Norris leads Verstappen in Hungarian GP FP2

McLaren’s Lando Norris set the fastest time in second practice for the 2024 Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix weekend after Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc crashed out.

The weekend started encouragingly for Ferrari as Carlos Sainz topped first practice but his team-mate Leclerc - who was third in FP1 - spun and hit the barriers 16 minutes into FP2.

Leclerc took too much kerb at the Turn 4 left-hand kind and spun, causing the front-left of his Ferrari to hit the barriers and bring out the red flags.

The resulting 16-minute stoppage cost teams considerable time, although the crash and its resulting damage was of particular concern to Ferrari, which has brought an underbody upgrade to the Hungaroring for both of its drivers.

After the stoppage, the field equipped soft tyres and it was Norris who went fastest with a time of 1m17.788s thanks to a fastest first sector of all that was two tenths faster than Max Verstappen’s first sector. The championship leader finished second - having himself set the fastest middle sector - but he was 0.243 seconds off Norris.

Sainz finished third in FP2, losing three tenths to Norris in the second sector alone, while Sergio Perez was fourth for Red Bull despite setting the fastest third sector. Half a second off Norris’s pace, George Russell rounded out the top five for Mercedes.

Another tight top-10 battle

Just 0.077s separated Russell in fifth and RB’s Daniel Ricciardo in eighth - with Kevin Magnussen (Haas) and the second Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton between them.

Williams’s Alex Albon finished ninth overall and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso took 10th, leaving Sauber and Alpine as the only two teams without a driver in the top 10.

Given the short lap, it’s no surprise that the gaps are narrow - but the midfield here will be as tight as ever; just one second split 15th-placed Nico Hulkenberg and session leader Norris.

Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu had a near miss in FP2 as he also spun at Turn 4 shortly after the mid-session restart and narrowly missed the Red Bull of Perez.

Zhou was slowest and 2.2s off the pace in this session.

Does Red Bull hold the cards?

Long runs followed the brief soft-tyre melee at the Hungaroring with McLaren opting to have its drivers run on hards (C3 tyres) while most of its rivals completed laps on mediums (C4 tyres).

Red Bull looked assured on the mediums with the under-pressure Perez setting a fastest time of 1m23.321s on those compared to his team-mate’s best long-run effort of 1m24.005s. Perez was three tenths faster on average during that stint on medium tyres.

Crucially, Verstappen is running all of Red Bull’s significant upgrade package and Perez has fewer of the new parts to play with. The FP2 result might therefore imply that Verstappen was running with more fuel or managing his tyres far more stringently.

Sainz’s long-run on the medium tyres wasn’t quite as fast as Red Bull’s. The Ferrari driver put in a personal best effort of 1m23.965s and an average of 1m25.080s on his 11-lap stint.

McLaren did show some more promise as Norris’s fastest time on hard tyres was a 1m23.719s and he averaged 1m24.146s on his eight-lap-long run. Team-mate Oscar Piastri seemed to struggle on Friday afternoon as he didn’t put in a competitive soft-tyre run, nor did he complete a representative long stint on his hard tyres.