Friday, 25 July 2014

Hamilton leads Mercedes 1-2 in FP1 as Raikkonen shows improvement for Ferrari

(Mercedes AMG F1 Team)

Mercedes Lewis Hamilton lead a team 1-2 in the first free practice session for Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix. Hamilton set a benchmark time of 1m 25.814s, 0.183s ahead of team mate and main title rival Nico Rosberg while Kimi Raikkonen did a great job for Ferrari to finish the session best of the rest 6 tenths of a second behind the Mercedes duo.

Fernando Alonso was fourth fastest in the second Ferrari four tenths of a second behind his team mate. Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel was fifth fastest for Infiniti Red Bull Racing while McLaren's Kevin Magnussen finished the session in sixth place just ahead of Jean Eric Vergne in the first Toro Rosso. 
Daniel Ricciardo was eighth fastest despite suffering a battery power issue during the session as a result of the problem the Australian lost valuable track time. 

Jenson Button was 9th fastest in the second McLaren at a circuit where the 2009 world champion always goes well at. Williams Martini Racing's Felipe Massa rounded out the top ten 2.146s off the time set by Lewis Hamilton. However all of this morning's times were set on the Medium compound tyre so you can expect Williams pace to improve this after when they make the switch to the Option tyre.

Esteban Gutierrez put in a good performance for the Sauber F1 Team as the Mexician finished the session just outside the top ten in eleventh place as the Swiss based outfit aim to head into the Summer break following a performance that they can build on for the rest of the season. The team have really struggled so far this season and have yet to score a championship point.

Nico Hulkenberg was 12th in the first of the Sahara Force India F1 cars. The German finished the session 2.287s behind Hamilton.

Daniil Kvyat was 13th fastest in the second Toro Rosso while Pastor Maldonado was 14th for the Lotus F1 Team. Valtteri Bottas had a somewhat disappointing session for the Williams Martini Racing Team finishing down in 15th place just ahead of Sergio Perez in the second Force India. 

Romain Grosjean had a slight problem with his E22 and as a result was down the order in 17th place for the Lotus F1 Team. 

Adrian Sutil was 18th in the seecond Sauber just ahead of Kamui Kobayashi in the first of the Caterham runners. The Japanese driver finished the session just ahead of team mate Marcus Ericsson. Max Chilton suffered a problem at the start of the session in his Marussia which resulted in flames coming from his car in the pit-lane however the team did a fantastic job to turn the car around and get Chilton out on tack at the very end of the session. He managed to go ahead of his team Jules Bianchi who rounded out the runners in 22nd place. 

Free Practice 2 get underway at 1PM (Irish time)

© Ben Johnston 2014


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