After the British Grand Prix’s sprint format debut, practice reverted to a pair of one-hour Friday sessions in Budapest.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was fastest ahead of Bottas in FP1 but he struggled with his car’s balance in FP2, and Bottas led team-mate Lewis Hamilton in setting the fastest times of the day overall.
Hungarian Grand Prix FP1 results: Verstappen fastest from Bottas
What happened in Free Practice 1?
Verstappen set the early pace during a long opening run, as Honda checked out his engine that was involved in his 51g accident at Silverstone, working down to 1m19.025s on the hard tyres.
Mercedes ran the soft tyres relatively early, with Bottas producing 1m17.616s to lead the way. Hamilton got within 0.106s of that for P2 with 20 minutes to go.
The session was then interrupted by Yuki Tsunoda crashing his AlphaTauri at Turn 4, causing a red flag.
At the resumption, Verstappen fitted softs and unleashed a lap of 1m17.555s, beating Bottas by 0.061s. Hamilton was third on 1m17.722s.
Carlos Sainz was best of the rest for Ferrari, over half a second down with a time of 1m18.115s. Pierre Gasly was fifth for AlphaTauri, ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Alpine. The second Ferrari of Charles Leclerc was seventh from Lando Norris (McLaren) and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll.
Hungarian Grand Prix FP2 results: Bottas fastest from Hamilton
What happened in Free Practice 2?
In FP2, Bottas set the early pace on mediums at 1m18.376s – 0.046s clear of Verstappen after the first runs, with Hamilton almost half a second slower. After a visit to the pits, Hamilton went for a second run and jumped to the top on 1m18.140s, while Sebastian Vettel got to within 0.088s of the pace using soft tyres on his Aston.
As in FP1, the Mercedes duo again went early to run the softs, with Bottas producing 1m17.012s and Hamilton achieving 1m17.039s, which was 0.027s slower.
Verstappen’s soft run was poor, 0.298s off the pace, and he complained of massive understeer. Team-mate Perez, eight-tenths off the pace, was beaten to the fourth-fastest time by Alpine’s Esteban Ocon. Gasly was sixth, ahead of Alonso, Vettel, Norris and Stroll.
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