It was not Max Verstappen or Charles Leclerc, favorites for every weekend in 2022, but Carlos Sainz who led TL1 in Hungary
Formula 1 got underway at the Hungaroring for the last weekend before the summer break. On Friday morning (29th), the cars took to the tricky track in the Eastern European country to begin work on the Hungarian Grand Prix. With the track well above 50°C, on fire, Carlos Sainz got the better of Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
LIVE and IN REAL TIME, GRANDE PRÊMIO follows all the activities of the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix weekend.
Check out TL1:
The heat of the Hungarian afternoon was overwhelming as the scheduled time for the first free practice session, 2pm local time [9am Brasília] approached. With a 32°C ambient temperature and 55°C on the track, the cars were given the green flag to take the Hungaroring track after a year.
On the weekend that closes the part of the season that was played before the summer break and 24 hours after announcing he will leave Formula 1 at the end of the season, Sebastian Vettel was the first to take to the track. In fact, the two Aston Martin's were out in the early stages. And it was a race to get going, because 17 drivers were on the track with less than four minutes on the clock.
Between the two main teams of the season, the first round of fast laps came quickly and showed Max Verstappen going 1min21s235 and taking the lead, while Carlos Sainz was right behind. But Sainz would then do the same, setting a lap of 1min20s6. The times would still drop a lot, however. If Sergio Pérez was slow to arrive, Charles Leclerc stuck to 1min20s225 to shoot even lower on soft tires.
Free practice had a new feature. Actually, an old acquaintance who was also on track in TL1 in France a week ago: Alfa Romeo's reserve Robert Kubica, who was again painting on Valtteri Bottas' car to start the work.
Meanwhile, the TV broadcast turned on Pérez's radio to show three sneezes from the Mexican. Yes, three sneezes. Pérez sneezed hard three times in a row and said he had some kind of allergy.
Who was running well in the session was McLaren, apparently stronger at the start in Hungary than in France. Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo were ahead of the Alpine and were in the top six. Mercedes was also starting at a reasonable pace, despite their misgivings that they have a good car for this kind of track. With George Russell a little better than Lewis Hamilton, the two were close to their rivals in Ferrari and Red Bull.
If Leclerc, Verstappen, Sainz, and Pérez even put 1s on the fifth-placed Russell at one point, the reason was solely the fact that no one else was using soft tires. After Mercedes in particular put on the red stripe rubber, the situation became much closer. It is important to note that, as happened in France, Pirelli selected the intermediate range of tires - C2, C3 and C4 - for the Hungarian weekend.
The lead of the practice session kept changing hands. Verstappen even recovered, but with almost half of the session gone, Leclerc lapped in 1min19s4 to get back on top. The position was far from secure, however. Russell even jumped up to second, opening up the two, but was quickly pushed down.
For the second half of practice, AlphaTauri put on the soft tires and opened the sequence of intermediate teams that would do the same. Haas did the same and saw Mick Schumacher run off the track at turn 12 of the Hungaroring - moments later, Hamilton would do the same in the Mercedes. The area of the track was dirty and made it easy to slip off the track. Russell almost escaped later, only at turn one. He had to brake his tires.
It was Sainz who came to take the lead with 20 minutes to go and took the lead with 1min19s262. But Verstappen would respond, as he had been doing, with 1min18s880. Finally, McLaren also used the soft tires. It was enough for Norris to drip among the top finishers.
It turned out that Sainz really wanted to lead TL1. The Spaniard, who drove very strong in France and was hindered by two penalties caused entirely by Ferrari, clocked 1min18s750 and retook the lead. Verstappen was second, while Leclerc was third. Pérez followed behind Norris and Russell.
Another thing that showed up on Friday were Aston Martin's new front wings, trying to make a performance leap that has yet to appear in an extremely disappointing 2022. Vettel and Stroll were in 11th and 12th place in the final ten minutes, when several teams opted to use the hard tires on track.