F1 Hungarian GP live commentary and updates - FP2
Follow along for updates throughout FP2 ahead of Formula 1's Hungarian Grand Prix
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Welcome back to the Hungaroring
It'll soon be – as the song goes – 5 o'clock somewhere, and that somewhere is Central Europe. The most significant development since FP1 ended is that Fernando Alonso is returning to the cockpit. He sat out first practice owing to an unspecified back injury, prompting many of the commentariat to make ageist comments. Shush now!
Yesterday Fernando had a fascinating - if costly - proposal to reduce spray in wet races.
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Zak Mauger / LAT Images via Getty Images
We're just minutes away from the off. Doesn't that new pit complex look swish? In temps perdu one had to wear a gas mask to defeat the fug of body odour when one ventured into the photographers' room towards the end of a day.
Nico Hulkenberg is first out of the pits and on track. He sat out FP1 while Alpine reserve driver Paul Aron took his car. Sadly that ended in mechanical failure.
Meanwhile Kimi Antonelli's Mercedes is still up on stands and shorn of some bodywork as mechanics work on the rear end.
Yuki Tsunoda goes fastest
Tsunoda fans will be yelling "stop the count" as their man goes fastest so far with a 1:17.645 on medium Pirellis. But his stay on P1 is curtailed by Isack Hadjar and George Russell, who is now fastest of all with a 1:17.442.
Very little of this means anything, of course, since we're miles away from the ultimate pace set this morning, let alone in qualifying last year.
Everyone now out on track, and all but Esteban Ocon, Oliver Bearman and Gabriel Bortoleto are on mediums. Those outliers are on hard Pirellis.
One of Hulkenberg's first acts is to run wide in sector two and scatter gravel onto the track surface.
The world feed crosses to the Ferrari garage, where Antonio Giovinazzi - or "Joe Vinazzi" as certain members of the commentariat enunciated his name – is watching and, no doubt, wondering what happened to his F1 career.
Fabulous shot of Oscar Piastri exploring the limits of adhesion at Turn 4, having to gather his McLaren up from the consequences of a massive slide. This is a trickier corner than it looks because of the circuit topography - at the end of the uphill straight it reaches a plateau at this corner, so the entry is blind.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Simon Wohlfahrt / AFP via Getty Images
Bearman, Ocon and Bortoleto continuing to circulate on hards while the rest of the field, like the man who slapped the cheerful old lady at the seance, strikes a happy medium.
Top three at the moment is separated by 0.446s as Piastri moves to P1 with a 1:16.697, surpassing team-mate Norris's previous best of 1:16.916. Leclerc is two tenths further in arrears in third.
Antonelli and Russell - currently fourth and fifth - have called it after three laps each on mediums.
Tsunoda complaining his "balance is so messy" but he's only three hundredths slower around the lap than team-mate Max Verstappen at the moment.
Speaking of Verstappen, he is asked for an update on his car balance and replies that it's both front and rear "like driving on ice". Perhaps he could call Torvill and Dean in as consultants, now they've performed for the last time?
Lando Norris now fastest with 1:16.525, 0.172s quicker than Piastri's previous best.
The Norris lap was interesting because it was his second effort on new mediums - he's just pulled into the pits after 7 laps. Piastri is back out on used mediums.
Tsunodawatch: currently P10, four and a half hundredths faster than Verstappen.
Elsewhere in the top 10 it's a case of the usual suspects: behind Leclerc in P3 there's Antonelli, Hadjar, Albon, Russell, Lawson and Hamilton before Tsunoda. But Leclerc is nearly half a second slower than Norris.
Hulkenberg has been straight down to business - currently P12 on 1:17.651.
Lance Stroll and Carlos Sainz now out on softs. Brace yourselves for some quick laps. Or a red flag...
Sainz goes P3 with that soft-shod lap. 1:16.874. It was actually quite scrappy.
Now Norris and Piastri emerge on softs, as do Hulkenberg, Ocon and Colapinto.
Lance Stroll purple in sector one in his first push lap on the softs. PB in the second. Then purple again in the final sector. P1! 1:16.221. That's 0.304s faster than Norris went on mediums.
Leclerc, Antonelli, Hadjar, Albon, Lawson, Hamilton, Verstappen, Bearman and Bortoleto now going to the softs.
There's a lot of cars out on track so there will be complaints about traffic.
Boom! 1:15.915 for Piastri. Three tenths faster than Stroll.
Hadjar and Antonelli put in reasonable efforts to go P3 and P4 for now, but half a second and more slower than Piastri.
And Norris is on a flier - purple in the first two sectors, crowned by a PB in the third - to go 1:15.624. That's P1, 0.291s faster than his team-mate and bunking the aforementioned Hadjar to P4.
But then Hamilton and Russell come steaming in. Russell fourth fastest with a 16.417. Hamilton now sixth behind Hadjar.
It is he (again)
Leclerc's first flier on softs is good for P3, 1:16.145. But that's half a second off Norris and now Stroll usurps Charles with 1:16.119s.
Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Fernando Alonso, back pain notwithstanding, is currently lying P5 after the first soft-tyre push laps. Just over a tenth off his Aston Martin team-mate.
Max Verstappen is going to be investigated after the session for littering. The world TV feed shows him ejecting what looks like a jerry cloth from the cockpit. As they say in Australia, don't be a tosser!
Bearman goes P11 with a lap that looks to be on the edge from the on-car camera, maybe a touch scrappy. He shakes his head, team principal Ayao Komatsu shakes his head.
Norris out again on used softs but his push lap comes a-cropper before it even starts - he pushes too hard on the approach to the final corner, dabs a left-rear wheel on the grass, and nearly puts it in the wall.
Piastri back out on mediums so the fun could be over at the top of the timesheets. He's still 0.291s off his team-mate.
Stroll and Alonso in P4 and P5 at the end of their soft-tyre runs. Hamilton - P6 - is 0.705s off Norris's benchmark and the now-standard three-and-a-bit-tenths off Leclerc.
Yes, Norris back out on mediums, along with Stroll, Russell, Hadjar, Tsunoda, Antonelli, Hulkenberg, Verstappen, Lawson, Sainz, Albon and Colapinto. Ocon and Bortoleto on hards.
Williams trying to signal Carlos Sainz that telemetry has been lost from his car.
Not a great session for Alpine with Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto propping up the order in P19 and P20, a second and a half off frontrunning pace.
Franco Colapinto, Alpine
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Also not great for Williams. Telemetry restored to Sainz but he's only P16. Albon P18.
In terms of spread of performance, most teams have improved relative to FP1 - but some more than others. Norris is four tenths faster than he was in FP1, Piastri little more than two tenths.
Colapinto is three tenths faster than he was in FP1, where he was P18, but the Saubers have found more pace: Bortoleto is seven tenths faster than he was before.
Hamilton still circulating on softs but hasn't improved his lap time.
Going to be a long night for the sim jockeys in the Red Bull factory. Verstappen complaining about balance again and his fastest time on the softs is less than two tenths faster than his best in the previous session. That means the gap to the fastest McLaren has expanded from 0.888s to 1.167s. He's currently P14
Team-mate Tsunoda has found almost a second this session - from 1:17.393 to 1:16.485.
We do have some soft-tyre action at the death of this session. Both McLarens out on used softs, as are Hulkenberg and Ocon, Bortoleto and Albon.
By: Stuart Codling
