Brendan Lines July 18, 2020 08:30am

The steely skies over the Hungaroring opened up for FP2 as sopping wet conditions affected track times adversely, but the silver lining for Ferrari was Sebastian Vettel topped the session in P1.

Vettel’s time of 1:40.464s in the wet was some 24 seconds slower than FP1’s times, Mercedes flying Fin Valtteri Bottas managed P2 with a 1:40.736.

Only 13 drivers posted a time in FP2, Lewis Hamilton who was fastest in FP1, went out on the green ring intermediate tyres but did not post a timed lap on them.

However Racing Point had both drivers out on track, looking to improve their disappointing performance in the wet of the Styrian Gp last week, drivers Lance Stroll and Sergio Perez finished P5 and P6 respectively some+0.2s off the pace.

Perez’s session however wasn’t without incident going off at the Turn 6 chicane in the slippery conditions.

McLaren’s Carlos Sainz finished P3 after flirting with limits of adhesion at Turn 3, Sainz will be one to watch having scored points at the last four Hungarian Grands Prix.

Pierre Gasly went out on track to make up for lost ground in FP1, managing P6 was a vast improvement for the Frenchman, but things got little hot under the collar of his AT01 as Gasly reported ‘a burning smell’ over the teams radio channel.

Kimi Raikkonen stepped back in to his Alfa for FP2 posting the most amount of laps run with 16 laps in P9, however the flying Fin didn’t soar as high as his compatriot Bottas as Raikkonen’s Alfa struggled to get heat into its wet tyres.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc rounded out the top ten trying out a mix of intermediate and full wet tyres, but was some +3.0s slower than teammate Vettel.

Tomorrow’s FP3 and Qualifying sessions are likely to be rain affected again this week, with local forecasts predicting a 58 per cent chance of rain and a thunderstorm in the afternoon.

FP3  starts 07:30pm local time tonight.

Full FP2 results:

POS	NO	DRIVER	CAR	TIME	GAP	LAPS
1	5	Sebastian Vettel	FERRARI	1:40.464		12
2	77	Valtteri Bottas	MERCEDES	1:40.736	+0.272s	5
3	55	Carlos Sainz	MCLAREN RENAULT	1:41.784	+1.320s	6
4	18	Lance Stroll	RACING POINT BWT MERCEDES	1:42.380	+1.916s	6
5	11	Sergio Perez	RACING POINT BWT MERCEDES	1:42.470	+2.006s	5
6	10	Pierre Gasly	ALPHATAURI HONDA	1:42.588	+2.124s	7
7	33	Max Verstappen	RED BULL RACING HONDA	1:42.820	+2.356s	4
8	8	Romain Grosjean	HAAS FERRARI	1:43.335	+2.871s	6
9	7	Kimi Räikkönen	ALFA ROMEO RACING FERRARI	1:43.471	+3.007s	16
10	16	Charles Leclerc	FERRARI	1:43.725	+3.261s	10
11	99	Antonio Giovinazzi	ALFA ROMEO RACING FERRARI	1:44.411	+3.947s	9
12	4	Lando Norris	MCLAREN RENAULT	1:46.000	+5.536s	5
13	26	Daniil Kvyat	ALPHATAURI HONDA	1:47.422	+6.958s	7
14	31	Esteban Ocon	RENAULT			1
15	3	Daniel Ricciardo	RENAULT			1
16	44	Lewis Hamilton	MERCEDES			1
17	6	Nicholas Latifi	WILLIAMS MERCEDES			2
18	63	George Russell	WILLIAMS MERCEDES			2
19	23	Alexander Albon	RED BULL RACING HONDA			3
20	20	Kevin Magnussen	HAAS FERRARI			1