The second free practice session for Sunday’s Hungarian GP was headed by Red Bull duo Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.
An incident free second free practice session was run in scorching conditions around the Hungaroring this afternoon. The track temperature reached a high of 45 degrees celcius and the Red Bulls’ pace was just as hot.
Where Mercedes is expected to hold the advantage over a single flying lap teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg could not get closer than half a second to Sebastian Vettel’s fastest time of 1:21:264.
The long runs didn’t swing it anyone else’s favour either. Mark Webber looked to be the quicker of the two Red Bull drivers on the medium compound tyres as the Australian set several laps within a tenth of each other. The soft compound tyre looks in the region of a second a lap faster than the white-walled medium tyre but the degradation level revealed a life-span of roughly eigth to ten laps.
Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen was the only question mark with regards to his one lap pace as the Finn encountered traffic on both attempts of setting a flying lap. However, the Iceman did pop in a time quickest enough for eight after three flying laps while Grosjean set his fastest time on his second flying lap. An indication perhaps that the Lotus is looking after the softer compound a bit better than their competition.
Ferrari looked to be struggling on the softer of the two compounds with a drop off of about two seconds being the result for both Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso.
As the checquered flag fell at the end of the second free practice session it was Red Bull who looked to have the best package both in quali and race trim. It’s up to the rest of the pack to find something overnight.