(Motorsports news) Hungarian GP, Sergio Perez lost control of his RB19 after dipping his left rear tyre on the outside grass into the long right of Turn 5 with two minutes remaining and before anyone had set a time. The car spun away from him in a full 360-degree spin and speared into the outside wall, damaging the recently modified sidepods on the left side as well as both front corners.

The session was interrupted for eight minutes by red flags in Hungary as the Red Bull was recovered, after which the majority of the group returned, only to find that conditions had altered with rain falling. Kevin Magnussen was poised to do the first timed lap while on the mediums, but as he approached the final bends where the rain was fiercest, he came across Valtteri Bottas recovering from a spin in his Alfa Romeo, and all the cars packed back into the pits.

This resulted in a lengthy halt in activity. Charles Leclerc ventured out right before the halfway point before pitting, and McLaren put both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri out as the rain began to fall. At the conclusion of the first sector, Piastri had a massive sliding moment exiting the fast left of Turn 4, with both McLarens and Magnussen, who had joined them in the brief excursion, swiftly returning to the pits.

With little over 25 minutes left, Lando Norris told McLaren he disagreed with the decision to pit at this point because Pierre Gasly had also tried one round on the inters, but he nevertheless went to the pits with his teammate. With 20 minutes left, Bottas departed and deemed the conditions “drivable.” The Finn then attempted the session’s first flying lap to loud applause from Hungary’s spectators lining the pit straight.

With his C43’s rear end twitching as he raced around the wet track of Hungary, Bottas sped up and established the benchmark in 1m47.787s, around 30 seconds slower than was planned for the first practice session. A large group of vehicles had left in Bottas’s wake, with the Williams duo leading the way after completing their first timed laps; Logan Sargeant’s 1m46.838 and Albon’s 1m47.407 put the American drivers in the lead.

After Carlos Sainz spun while accelerating onto the brief straight adjacent to the quick, downhill Turn 3 right and barely brushed the wall on the inside with both of his Ferrari’s left-side corners, the practice was again called to a halt. When the marshals had to push him away under red flag conditions in Hungary’s circuit because he tried to move forward while facing backward, it was discovered that Sainz had broken the left-side endplate of his front wing.

With 11 minutes left in the Hungarian GP session, FP1 began, and the majority of the drivers headed back out. However, a number of them, including Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, did not, so they ended the session without recording a time. Piastri’s 1m39.906s defeated Russell’s 1m40.44s in the final two minutes, but the Mercedes driver nipped back in front just before the checkered flag was raised.

The Hungary FP-1 session’s top time was finally established by George Russell ahead of Oscar Piastri at 1m38.795s, some two minutes after the chequered flag initially appeared. Piastri’s final lap was a 1m39.154s, but Russell had stayed on it. Prior to Norris, who moved Alonso, who had been in the pits for the last few minutes, down to fifth, Lance Stroll finished out the top three.

Valtteri Bottas and Charles Leclerc followed, with Zhou Guanyu taking over eighth late on after Alfa was forced to look into a problem with his car’s electrical energy deployment following the brief early dry running at Hungary FP-1. Logan Sargeant and Nico Hulkenberg eventually made up the top 10, with Kevin Magnussen finishing in 11th and Yuki Tsunoda in 12th after an unnoticed incident caused the right side of his front wing to come off late in the race.

Alex Albon was the last runner to finish with a time, placing 13th overall among a group that did not include Daniel Ricciardo, who returned to Formula One in the other AlphaTauri.

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