Lewis Hamilton maintained his advantage at the top of the timesheets during second practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix, setting the fastest time of Friday practice with a 1:21.018.
He was 0.241s faster than his nearest competitor Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, with Jenson Button third fastest in the second McLaren, 0.304s off his team-mate's pace. The Red Bulls were fourth and fifth with Mark Webber leading Sebastian Vettel by 0.041s.
The times were significantly faster than the morning session as drivers bolted on the sticky supersoft tyres and track temperatures rose by 10C. It's clear that the top three teams will be closely matched this weekend, and Red Bull showed none of the early signs of dominance they displayed at the same circuit last year.
Felipe Massa was fifth fastest but over a second off the front-running pace, with the gap to the Mercedes behind narrower than the gap to Vettel ahead. However, his long-run pace was closer to Ferrari team-mate Alonso, who was noticeably quicker than his rivals in the middle sector of the lap when running a heavy fuel load. It looks like the Mercedes will again be a solid fourth with the inter-team battle between Nico Rosberg (seventh fastest) and Michael Schumacher (eighth fastest) set to rage on.
Force India again looks likely to provide a strong performance in the midfield with Paul di Resta ninth fastest and Adrian Sutil tenth. However, they will face competition from the Saubers, Renaults and Williams who all looked within striking distance of the top ten over the two Friday sessions.
Towards the bottom of the time sheets, Jarno Trulli clocked a very respectable time just 0.1s off Sebastien Buemi in the Toro Rosso. He was also quicker than Vitaly Petrov for much of the 90 minutes, although the Russian's Renault spent most of the second half of the session stuck in the garage. HRT's Tonio Liuzzi also has limited mileage, completing less laps than his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and finishing last overall.
The bottom four cars were all outside 107% of Hamilton's fastest time, but are likely to be closer or within that all-important marker when it comes to the first session of qualifying.
© ESPN EMEA Ltd.
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