Lando Norris headed team-mate Oscar Piastri to a McLaren one-two in first practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Norris was 0.019 seconds quicker than the Australian, who leads the Briton by 16 points in the world championship heading into the last race before Formula 1’s summer break.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was third fastest, 0.217secs off the pace, and split from team-mate Lewis Hamilton by Racing Bulls driver Isack Hadjar.
Haas driver Oliver Bearman was sixth fastest, ahead of Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll.
The other Aston Martin driver, Fernando Alonso, sat out the first session to rest a muscular issue in his back from which the two-time champion has been suffering since the Belgian Grand Prix last weekend.
The Spaniard, who was replaced by reserve driver Felix Drugovich in the first session, is expected to be back in the car for the second.
The session was relatively incident-free, despite Drugovich and Williams’ Carlos Sainz running wide at the first corner after locking their front brakes.
Mercedes have reverted to an older rear suspension set-up for this weekend in an attempt to isolate where their car has lost performance in the last few races.
The belief is that the newer suspension design, which featured a higher degree of anti-lift in an attempt to keep the aerodynamic platform more stable, might have induced other issues into the car’s behaviour on corner entry.
/Sauber also had a reserve driver in one of their cars, Paul Aron standing in for Nico Hulkenberg. But the Estonian, who is on loan from Alpine, managed only eight laps before a car failure brought his session to a halt.
The other Sauber of Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto was 19th fastest.
By BBC Sport
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