Warm-up: Coulthard gets a boost

The Scot posted a 1m16.915s lap in his McLaren-Mercedes, beating Schumacher's Ferrari into second by a useful 0.423s. But as pole-sitter Schumacher demonstrated in Saturday's qualifying, it's entirely possible that the German was keeping his powder dry once again... Coulthard lines up alongside him on the front row, so expect startline fireworks.

"We looked good in the warm-up, but we don't know what other people were running," said Coulthard. "Now it is a question of how the start goes and what happens in the
pit stops. A lot could be decided at the first corner, but there will still be the pit
stops after that."

If Coulthard finishes ahead of Schumacher, the title fight will continue to the next race, in Belgium. But if Schumacher outscores DC by just three points, the championship is his with four races still to run.

Behind the title protagonists, Rubens Barrichello, who entertains hopes of grabbing second in the points from DC, was third fastest in the second Ferrari.

Fourth fastest was Williams-BMW driver Ralf Schumacher, who is gunning for his fourth win of the season. Williams and BMW had expected to struggle relatively at the Hungaroring, but the warm-up time of 1m17.608s with a race fuel load showed how progress has been made through the weekend.

Mika Hakkinen was fifth fastest in the second McLaren, with Jarno Trulli's Jordan-Honda and Nick Heidfeld's Sauber-Petronas continuing their strong weekends in sixth and seventh.

Olivier Panis's BAR-Honda, Kimi Raikkonen's Sauber and Eddie Irvine's Jaguar rounded out the top 10 in a surprisingly incident-free 30-minute session.

Slowest of all after niggling technical problems was Benetton-Renault driver Jenson Button, who completed eight laps and set a best time 4.482s behind Coulthard's race-spec benchmark.

For full warm-up results, click here.