Hungarian Grand Prix – Free Practice 3: Hamilton at ease, Alpine anonymous

The Hungaroring was bathed in radiant sunshine this Saturday, after the dreary and rainy weather on Friday. The hierarchy remained relatively uncertain, even for the first place. This third free practice session, preceding the qualifying, would thus indicate which forces would be present at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The F1 television overlays seemed to have forgotten that Daniel Ricciardo was making his comeback for this Grand Prix: Nyck de Vries appeared on the provisional standings. Mistakes happen, but it’s always funny to point out.

The Australian certainly didn’t waste any time before hitting the asphalt, just like his former teammate Max Verstappen. Everyone is concerned about the same issue regarding the planned tire changes for qualifying.

The Dutchman, the only one remaining in F1 by the way, started the hostilities with a time of 1:18.478 on medium tires. We are still about five seconds away from the track record, set by Hamilton with a time of 1:13.447 a few years ago.

In the footage, Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari was particularly unstable in sector 1, just like Sergio Pérez’s Red Bull: the Hungarian heat is likely to put the hard and medium tires to the test.

The Mercedes, on the other hand, are very far off the pace of the Red Bulls since the beginning of the weekend. George Russell barely made it across the line, 940 milliseconds behind Verstappen’s time. Even the cars on soft tires were far from being competitive at the start of the session.

Except that the hunting group was led by Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris’s McLarens, and then Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly’s Alpines after 20 minutes of work.

Then came the Alfa Romeo cars of Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou, who respectively failed to match Verstappen’s time by 11 and 66 milliseconds. The focus for everyone was either on qualifying or race pace, as was the case for Red Bull and Ferrari.

Behind all these beautiful cars, the AlphaTauri team, whose future name we still don’t know, have started their work on the hard white tyres, in order to avoid any unpleasant surprises in Q1.

The grip does not satisfy everyone

The last half hour of the session was slightly different from usual, as some teams set aside their quest for performance. The upcoming qualifying format change is causing a bit of upheaval in the plans.

Fernando Alonso, on the other hand, set the fastest time in 1’18:350, a second and a half ahead of Verstappen…but on soft tires, compared to the mediums of the Dutchman. The performance differential between the two tire compounds is obviously not so small.

Bottas, on the other hand, debuted an Alfa Romeo with quite interesting performance, even on hard tires. He and his teammate Zhou remained firmly installed in the Top 5.

It should be noted the total anonymity of the Ferrari drivers, only 16th and 20th nearly a quarter of an hour into the session. Quite the opposite for Lando Norris, who proves that the McLaren is working well: on mediums, the British driver claimed the best time in 1:18.082, after a superb slide in the last corner!

The soft tires finally showed their performance: Lewis Hamilton, in 1’17:811, greatly improved Lando Norris’ time. Max Verstappen himself fell short by two and a half tenths of Hamilton, who achieved a significant lap.

The Red Bull drivers, particularly Max Verstappen, are struggling with a lack of grip on the Hungarian circuit. The Ferraris have hardly hit the track, and Carlos Sainz has finally decided to come out of his garage on soft tires. He has been followed by Charles Leclerc.

If the red cars have been disappointing, the Haas cars have shown a very impressive pace, with Nico Hülkenberg setting the 4th fastest time, less than three tenths behind Lewis Hamilton’s benchmark.

What can be said about the Alpines, which continue to disappoint purely in terms of lap times: while McLaren keeps moving forward, the two French cars were far behind: 16th and 19th…

Lewis Hamilton therefore set the fastest time of the session ahead of the Red Bulls of Verstappen and Pérez. Is this the return of a close fight for pole position?