Hamilton bounces back to outpace Verstappen in Hungarian practice

BUDAPEST: Lewis Hamilton bounced back to beat Max Verstappen and top the times for Mercedes in Saturday’s third and final free practice at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix. The seven-time world champion put his Friday struggles behind him in a show of pace at a circuit where he has claimed a record eight victories, outpacing Red Bull’s defending double world champion by 0.250 seconds. After a tortuous day on Friday, Sergio Perez recovered to post the third-best time in the second Red Bull ahead of Nico Hulkenberg of Haas, McLaren’s Lando Norris and George Russell in the second Mercedes.

Charles Leclerc was seventh ahead of his Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz, two-time champion Fernando Alonso of Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas. After Friday’s wet conditions, Saturday’s session offered a dry track and blue skies as Daniel Ricciardo led the way out of the pits in his Alpha Tauri. The returning Australian was briefly fastest before the senior Red Bull team joined the fray, Perez going top only to be replaced by Verstappen in 1:18.748.

The opening two sessions were also affected by F1’s latest rule change, this time with tyre-allocation, each driver being allocated 11 sets instead of the previous 13 and ordered to use certain compounds in each part of qualifying. As a result, both Mercedes and Red Bull limited their Friday running. Hamilton used only one set of mediums and reported his car was “at its worst” while his team made clear they would welcome Nyck de Vries back in a reserve role after the Dutchman had been dumped abruptly by Red Bull.