Daniel Ricciardo took the top spot in the second free practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The Red Bull driver set the sessions fastest time of 1:18.455 on the super soft tyres which was 0.183s faster than Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel’s time of 1:18.638 which also came courtesy of the super soft tyres.

Third fastest was the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas. The Finn cut the timing beam at 1:18.656 which was 0.201s off Ricciardo’s benchmark.

Kimi Raikkonen finished 4th fastest ahead of Lewis Hamilton who finished 5th fastest. It wasn’t the cleanest session for Raikkonen after he was seen coasting and coming to a stop at Turn 13. The Raikkonen reported he had no throttle over the radio. After a few seconds of going through a series of steering commands he was able to get the Ferrari restarted and back to the pits.

Max Verstappen finished 6th fastest ahead of Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg.

McLaren managed to get both their cars into the top 10 with Alonso finishing 8th fastest and Vandoorne finishing 10th. McLaren fancy this circuit as their best chance to bring in some decent championship points and their initial pace around the Hungaroring shows that they may be on the money.

Vandoorne ran into some trouble after he was told to back off and return to the pits after what seemed like another engine problem.

Carlos Sainz ended his session in 9th for Toro Rosso.

The session was somewhat shortened by two red flags. The first red flag came after Sauber’s Pascal Wehrlein crashed into the Turn 11 barriers. The Sauber driver lost the rear of his car into T11. He manage to catch the snap but ran out of road and crashed into the barrier. By his own account it was a big crash and he was immediately taken to the FIA medical centre for a checkup. Before the end of the session he was seen walking back to the Sauber garage giving everyone the thumbs up.

Jolyon Palmer’s rotten luck continues. After a puncture in FP1 he was caught out again in FP2 coming out of the final corner. Palmer lost the rear coming out of the corner. The Brit was able to catch the slide, but like Wehrlein, ran out of road and made contact with the barrier.

Red Bull’s update package to their car seems to be working very well and they’re mixing it up with Ferrari and Mercedes up front. While Red Bull are playing down their chances at a shot at pole position, they’ll be relishing the chance to spoil the party at Mercedes.

INITIAL CLASSIFICATION (END OF FP2): @danielricciardo likes the Hungaroring 😃 #HungarianGP 🇭🇺 #F1 pic.twitter.com/f9nzVVf0Bw

— Formula 1 (@F1) July 28, 2017

Photo credit: Red Bull Racing Formula One Team