Hungary: Mercedes duo 1-2 in first practice

Lewis Hamilton

Overnight rain meant intermediate tires were required for installation laps, but once the dry tires went on it was clear this weekend looks to be another waltz in the park for the Aldo Costa designed Mercedes cars. Lewis Hamilton set the pace in opening Formula 1 free practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The three-time world champion put up a lap of 1m21.347s on the super-softs Pirellis.

His Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg was second quickest, two tenths off the pace with Sebastian Vettel third, 1.6s behind and out to lunch like the rest of the teams.

Vettel's time was also set on the super-softs, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen on super-softs in fourth.

Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo was fifth quickest, three tenths clear of team-mate Max Verstappen, with both drivers only running the soft tires – i.e. they are sandbagging.

McLaren duo Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button – who had a number of off-track excursions between them – were seventh and eighth respectively.

Proving F1 is 99.9% car is the fact that most of the team cars below are adjacent to one another with near identical times. It does not matter who is in the cockpit, the car is as fast as the engineers make it. When autonomous technology is mature they won't even need the driver.

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