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Lewis Hamilton tops the time sheet in FP1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix

17 July 2020 at 11:23
Last update 17 July 2020 at 15:39
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  • Louis Shaw
  • Editor

Mercedes dominated FP1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix to continue their dominance of the 2020 F1 season. Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheet with a 1.16.003 on the hard tyre ahead of championship leader Valtteri Bottas and the Silver Arrows have got their weekend off to the perfect start. 

It was a slow start to the session with many of the teams taking their time on install laps before committing to setting a lap time. There was a constant threat of rain throughout the session but only a few drops fell and it didn't impact FP1 at all. 

It was Red Bull’s Max Verstappen who set the first fast time on the hard tyre but it wasn’t long before Mercedes were back at the top of the timesheet through championship leader Valtteri Bottas. Red Bull were off the pace with Verstappen finishing 8th and Alex Albon down in 13th. They'll be hoping to speed up in FP2 this afternoon. 

The Finn battled it out with his teammate and the two silver arrows took it in turns to top the leaderboard but it was Hamilton who ended the session on top setting a blistering lap on the hard tyre. 

Drama during the session

It was largely an uneventful session with the only real drama coming when Robert Kubica, who was filling in for Kimi Raikkonen at Alfa Romeo, spun coming out of the pit lane. It seemed that his hard tyres had not got up to temperature before he put the throttle down but there was no damage done and the session resumed. 

Pierre Gasly was unable to set a time due to an issue with his power unit. His team spent the whole session with the car in pieces trying to find out what is wrong and will hope to have it fixed before the start of FP2 this afternoon. 

Ferrari were off the pace for much of the session but sped up as FP1 came to an end. They finished in 6th and 7th and will still be wanting to improve before the business end of the weekend. 

It was Racing Point who finished behind Mercedes with Perez finishing third and Stroll coming in fourth. Red Bull were not far behind but it is always hard to know how much fuel and how hard each driver is pushing. 

Nicholas Latifi had a good session and was up to third fastest at one point. He finished the session in 15th but will be gaining confidence with every session he gets in a Formula 1 car. 

This was only FP1 and there is still a long way to go before the race. We'll be back with live updates from FP2 this afternoon.