HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX FRIDAY PRACTICE

 McLaren and Lando Norris led the way on pure pace in a sweltering Hungarian Grand Prix Friday practice showing. But the long-run times from the upgrade-assessing Red Bull squad suggest another intriguing battle at the front between Formula 1 2024’s top two squads is set to come on Sunday in Budapest.

Lando Norris and McLaren led the way on pure pace on Friday at Formula 1’s 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix, but a deeper look at the long-run times suggests Red Bull possesses a race pace advantage at this stage.

Red Bull also spent the day assessing the impact of its much-discussed engine cover cooling upgrade applied so far only to Max Verstappen’s car, while Ferrari too was working through what data it could on its reworked Barcelona floor amid Charles Leclerc’s disrupted day.

All that and more is included in our assessment of where things stand so far at the Hungaroring.

The story of the day.

In FP1, sweltering temperatures were the most notable element – with track heat peaking at 59.1°C, which Pirelli claims is only topped in its historical F1 data by 60°C in the 2018 race here and the 61°C in FP1 at the 2016 Malaysian GP.

F1 got to glimpse at Verstappen’s heavily revised RB20 – minus the high-waisted cooling gulleys added to Red Bull’s package at the start of the year – when he headed out of the pits, while Perez continued with the team’s old design.

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko would later claim “Checo has got the same upgrade as Max, but that one part [sidepod and engine cover] is the most obvious to see, so everyone thinks that he doesn’t have it”.

“But Checo has the rest,” Marko continued. “So the difference is marginal in terms of performance.”

Aston Martin also split its car specification in FP1, as only Fernando Alonso ran its raft of front wing, halo, floor, diffuser and beam wing updates (Lance Stroll got these for FP2). Here the Ferraris were fitted with the revised floors that the Scuderia hopes will cure the high-speed corner bouncing that has afflicted the SF-24s since Barcelona.

Carlos Sainz led the way in the day’s opening session, setting a best time of 1m18.713s to forge ahead of Leclerc, before Verstappen nipped in with a 1m18.989s to end up 0.276s down in second. Verstappen was, however, running used softs and so missing peak new tyre freshness, as he’d opened up on the softs when the Ferraris ran hards.

In FP2, Ferrari’s day took a downturn, as Leclerc caused a long red-flag period with his Turn 4 crash in the initial running on mediums. Running wide onto the exit kerbs at the fast left-hander unsettled his car and spun him off and backwards into the barriers on the track’s outside. After a 15-minute delay as the barriers were rearranged, the pack headed back out en masse on the softs, which meant Perez’s early session-leading 1m18.568s on the mediums was eclipsed.