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Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes upstaged Red Bull with the fastest time in final Hungarian Grand Prix practice.
Key moments:
> Hamilton beats Verstappen by 0.250s in final soft tyre runs
> Ricciardo only 18th but ahead of Tsunoda
Max Verstappen spent most of the session at the top of the times by virtue of early medium-tyre runs while midfielders got close on softer tyres without deposing him.
Red Bull was leaving it late to try softs for the first time all weekend given the use of the Alternative Tyre Allocation system for the first time in Hungary, which halves the amount of softs available to each time as well as mandating which compound to use in each of Q1, Q2 and Q3.
Verstappen was knocked down the order a touch as the more competitive teams tried softs but it seemed a fair assumption that he’d be back on top once he did likewise.
Instead a visibly aggressive 1m17.811s lap from Hamilton was a quarter of a second up on what Verstappen – who’d sounded unhappy with his car on team radio – could manage on softs.
That Mercedes top spot came despite suggestions from Hamilton on Friday that it was well off the pace this weekend.
Verstappen still took second, just 0.006s ahead of team-mate Sergio Perez.
The jumbled order from Friday continued, with Haas fourth courtesy of Nico Hulkenberg.
There was more encouragement for McLaren as Lando Norris went fifth without using softs.
Centre-of-attention AlphaTauri was a muted 18th and 20th on the timesheets, but the significant parts were that it did its best times on mediums and Daniel Ricciardo beat Yuki Tsunoda by three tenths of a second.
