Charles Leclerc edges Lando Norris by 0.015s to top Practice Two; plenty of mystery heading into Saturday as teams use varying run plans; watch Hungarian GP live on Sky Sports F1, P3 is at 11.30am Sat; F1 Juniors will be live on Sky Showcase and Sky Sports Mix on Sunday
Saturday 22 July 2023 19:35, UK
Charles Leclerc just pipped Lando Norris to the fastest time in a confusing Practice Two at the Hungarian GP that saw Red Bull and Mercedes have no cars in the top 10.
Leclerc posted a best time of 1:17.686 on the soft tyres in the Ferrari to just edge out Norris by 0.015s as McLaren's MCL60 continued to show good pace following its recent upgrades.
Pierre Gasly was third for Alpine, 0.232s off Leclerc's benchmark, but championship leader Max Verstappen was down in 11th while Sergio Perez was 18th and the two Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were 16th and 20th respectively.
With Formula 1 trialling the Alternative Tyre Allocation qualifying this weekend - which means each driver has two fewer sets of dry tyres - teams ran different run plans to their normal Practice Two format of initial set-up runs then qualifying simulations followed by longer race simulations.
It resulted in a jumbled-up top 10 and leaves plenty of mystery going into Saturday and a qualifying session where hard tyres must be used in Q1, medium tyres in Q2 and soft tyres in Q3.
Yuki Tsunoda was fourth in the lead AlphaTauri and Gasly's team-mate Esteban Ocon completed the top five.
In his first dry running of the AlphaTauri, Daniel Ricciardo was four tenths slower than new team-mate Tsunoda and finished up 14th in the final timesheet.
The Australian, who has replaced Nyck de Vries at the team, said of his first day back in F1: "Positions are probably not too relevant at the moment. I think it was more just for me today to feel basically where I am with the car, and it all felt pretty familiar.
"I think obviously there's a lot of outside attention, but once I put the helmet on and got in the car, it all felt like - in a way - I never really left.
"I think the car felt okay, so it doesn't feel too bad. A bit of work tonight, but doesn't feel too crazy.
"For sure, a bit more out of me, and for sure there's some things already I feel in the car that we can try to work on.
"So right now, I'm quite optimistic, it looked like Yuki as well had a pretty good day, so I think if we put all these things together, maybe tomorrow we can do okay."
Ricciardo ended up four places ahead of Perez in the final timesheet as the Mexican endured another tricky session after crashing out on his opening lap in Practice One.
He had a huge lock-up on his soft tyres while doing his longer-run stint which left him unable to use the set again for a low-fuel effort.
He also completed the fewest laps in the session, posting just 13 on the board.
Meanwhile Verstappen was 11th in the other Red Bull, nearly six tenths of a second off Leclerc's time having done his fastest lap on a used set of soft tyres.
And as Mercedes focused on longer stints and only ran the medium tyre, Hamilton and Russell also found themselves towards the rear of the field.
"We only had one tyre that we were going to use this session. So yeah, not really a great format this change that they made for this weekend, it just means we get less running," Hamilton said after the session.
"[The car] wasn't feeling good at all. It was feeling like the car at its worst today, but we'll work on the setup tonight and hopefully tomorrow… last year it felt terrible at the beginning and then [Mercedes finished P2 and P3]"
Russell added: "We were obviously on a very different programme to everybody else, we only used one set of tyres throughout, it was a set of used tyres as well from FP1, so the lap times don't really give a true representation. I'm sure tomorrow will be better."
Back in the top 10, Nico Hulkenberg was sixth for Haas, just ahead of Valtteri Bottas' Alfa Romeo. Bottas and team-mate Zhou Guanyu, who finished ninth, set their best times on the medium tyres.
Fernando Alonso split the two Alfa Romeos in eighth with Carlos Sainz rounding out the top 10, as just a quarter of a second covered P3-P10.
