Hamilton quickest again in second practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix

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.

Pos  Driver                Team                  Time               Laps
 1.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes      1m21.018s           29
 2.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m21.259s  + 0.241  40
 3.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m21.322s  + 0.304  34
 4.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m21.508s  + 0.490  35
 5.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m21.549s  + 0.531  31
 6.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari               1m22.099s  + 1.081  40
 7.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m22.121s  + 1.103  36
 8.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes              1m22.440s  + 1.422  36
 9.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes  1m22.835s  + 1.817  40
10.  Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes  1m22.981s  + 1.963  37
11.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari        1m23.030s  + 2.012  34
12.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari        1m23.399s  + 2.381  37
13.  Rubens Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth     1m23.679s  + 2.661  34
14.  Nick Heidfeld         Renault               1m23.861s  + 2.843  28
15.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Cosworth     1m24.181s  + 3.163  39
16.  Jaime Alguersuari     Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m24.182s  + 3.164  26
17.  Vitaly Petrov         Renault               1m24.546s  + 3.528  21
18.  Sebastien Buemi       Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m24.878s  + 3.860  35
19.  Jarno Trulli          Lotus-Renault         1m24.994s  + 3.976  38
20.  Heikki Kovalainen     Lotus-Renault         1m25.447s  + 4.429  39
21.  Timo Glock            Virgin-Cosworth       1m26.823s  + 5.805  33
22.  Jerome D'Ambrosio     Virgin-Cosworth       1m27.261s  + 6.243  28
23.  Daniel Ricciardo      HRT-Cosworth          1m27.730s  + 6.712  31
24.  Tonio Liuzzi          HRT-Cosworth          1m28.255s  + 7.237  25

All Timing Unofficial