It has been a successful afternoon for Scuderia Ferrari, as the Maranello team continued preparations ahead of the 2018 Hungarian Grand Prix, at the Hungaroring circuit. Sebastian Vettel mastered the ultrasofts here to top the second free practice session, though he was closely matched by Max Verstappen. Their team-mates Kimi Raikkonen and Daniel Ricciardo are slightly off the pace, but not as much as Mercedes, who couldn’t hook up a lap on ultrasofts and finish more than half a second behind with a quickest time set on the soft tyre.
Degradation will certainly be key to strategy here, as Pirelli confirmed earlier today, given the fact that it may dictate whether teams opt for a one-stop or slower two-stop strategy: “Sebastian Vettel doing a very long run on the ultrasofts but sustaining fast lap times, while many of his direct rivals are doing long runs on soft. Degradation of the ultrasoft will be the key to Hungarian GP strategy.” – Pirelli said, on their official Twitter account.
Sebastian Vettel, who was only fifth and seven tenths behind Verstappen on the first-run times when also on softs, then secured top spot with a best time of 1m16.834s using ultrasofts. After he went to the front, the two Red Bull drivers completed their ultrasoft qualifying simulations, with Verstappen slotting in behind. Daniel Ricciardo, using an older-specification V6 engine than teammate Verstappen, was third fastest and 0.153s slower than his teammate – and complained about the balance not being quite right.
Kimi Raikkonen, one of the few to set his initial laptime using the mediums, was one of the later drivers to complete his qualifying simulation and slotted into third place – setting the best final sector time of the session along the way. This meant the Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, were fifth and sixth having both had to abort their qualifying simulation runs.
Results: (Classification)
Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 1:16.834
Max Verstappen Red Bull Racing +0.074
Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing +0.227
Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari +0.319
Lewis Hamilton Mercedes +0.753
Valtteri Bottas Mercedes +1.034
Romain Grosjean Haas +1.231
Carlos Sainz Renault +1.661
Pierre Gasly Toro Rosso +1.684
Esteban Ocon Force India +1.927
Sergio Perez Force India +2.016
Fernando Alonso McLaren +2.023
Kevin Magnussen Haas +2.046
Nico Hulkenberg Renault +2.079
Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso +2.082
Marcus Ericsson Sauber +2.209
Charles Leclerc Sauber +2.303
Lance Stroll Williams +2.811
Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren +2.878
Sergey Sirotkin Williams +2.936
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