Lando Norris clocked the fastest time in the second practice session at this weekend’s Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, while Charles Leclerc caused a red flag stop.
Norris propelled his McLaren to the top at the Hungaroring as he set a 1:17.788s on the Softs to emerge quickest, two-tenths quicker than Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
However, it wasn’t plain sailing down at McLaren as Oscar Piastri’s MCL38 needed minor work to repair floor damage, with the Australian having had a disrupted FP1.
Leclerc is striving to recover from a torrid recent run this weekend, but his participation in proceedings was cut short as he careered his Ferrari into the wall at Turn 4.
The Monegasque ran wide onto the kerb exiting the sweeping, uphill left-hander and spun straight into the opposite barrier, causing an extensive 15-minute stoppage.
However, Leclerc wasn’t the sole driver to encounter problems at that corner as Zhou Guanyu also had a high-speed spin, which he blamed on Sergio Perez dawdling.
But the Sauber racer was fortunate enough to avoid contact with the barriers and continue, though he was unable to build upon his impressive top-five placing in FP1.
Behind Verstappen came the pacesetter from FP1 as Carlos Sainz wound up third fastest in the one remaining Ferrari car, with Perez a positive fourth in his Red Bull.
George Russell completed the top five places, 0.506s down on Norris’ benchmark, with Kevin Magnussen a shock sixth in the Haas to sandwich the Mercedes drivers.
Daniel Ricciardo has stressed that the coming two rounds will be a pivotal time and he produced a solid lap to be eighth as Alex Albon popped his Williams into ninth.
Fernando Alonso in the upgraded AMR24 rounded out the top 10 spots, with Valtteri Bottas missing out on promoting his developed Sauber C45 car higher than 11th.
Logan Sargeant was next up in 12th in the second Williams car ahead of the compromised Piastri in the McLaren, Esteban Ocon’s Alpine and Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas.
Hulkenberg split the Alpine racers as Pierre Gasly was 15th, while Lance Stroll was unable to replicate his earlier pace as he got his hands on Aston Martin’s upgrades.
Leclerc dropped down the order, but he remained in 18th spot as both Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou couldn’t execute clean low-fuel runs on the grippiest Soft rubber in FP2.
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