Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo edged Sebastian Vettel in opening practice for the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix, despite running a harder tyre than the Ferrari driver.
Vettel had led the timesheet after the opening 40 minutes of the session, with Red Bull electing to use the medium compound tyre at the start of the session.
Switching to the soft rubber for the second half of the session, Ricciardo vaulted to the top of the timesheet recording session-best times through the twisty sectors two and three.
With a 1m17.613s, he ended up 0.079s clear of the ultrasoft-shod Vettel, albeit the Ferrari driver lost time in the final sector of his run courtesy of traffic.
Ricciardo’s team-mate Max Verstappen was a further 0.009s adrift in third place but also using harder tyres than Vettel.
Kimi Raikkonen was fourth but was advised to return to the pits slowly at the end of the session as the team had detected an issue with his rear brakes.
The Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas finished fifth and sixth respectively. Both suffered right-front lock-ups into the hairpin Turn 1 during the session and Hamilton described the soft tyre as “terrible.”
During the session, Mercedes completed a front suspension set-up change on Hamilton’s car. He finished 0.423s behind Verstappen, while Bottas was 0.857s adrift.
Romain Grosjean occupied the best of the rest position in seventh, while team-mate Kevin Magnussen was 10th.
The Haas pair were split by the Renault duo. However, eighth-placed Nico Hulkenberg missed the final third of the session after he suffered an electrical shutdown. The team is yet to diagnose the cause of the issue. Prior to the fault, Hulkenberg was 0.1s faster than team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr.
Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson was another driver whose session ended prematurely. He spun at the final corner in the opening stages after dipping a wheel onto the grass while turning in. Later on, he lost control at the high-speed Turn 4, narrowly avoiding the wall but causing session-ending floor damage.
Ericsson finished bottom of the timesheet. Antonio Giovinazzi – who replaced Ericsson’s team-mate Charles Leclerc for the session – ended up 18th.
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