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As it happened: Friday Afternoon Practice
By Geoff Creighton and Emlyn Hughes
The live commentary has ended. No further updates will be posted.
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OVERVIEW |
PRACTICE TWO |
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Session length: |
90 minutes |
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CURRENT WEATHER |
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Clear skies |
High Temp: |
32°C / 90°F |
Track: |
Dry |
ABOUT |
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Emlyn Hughes and Geoff Creighton are autosport.com's live commentary team. The dynamic duo have developed an inimitable style and a reputation for fast, accurate and insightful commentary. With unrivaled access to events unfolding at the circuit, they bring you the very latest, as it happens.
Bugs and Feedback |
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Technical debriefs have taken place during the break, and the teams have made set-up changes to the machinery in readiness for another 90 minutes of track action.
The 19-year-old Spaniard got the ball rolling with an impressive first run of laps as he learned the circuit, steadily improving his lap times all the while. But soon, the Toyotas were setting the pace, and then the flood gates opened.
Suddenly the track was very busy and it was Red Bull's Mark Webber who topped the time sheets with a best lap of 1m22.615s. That mark proved unbeatable for much of the session, as the teams got down to serious set-up and tyre testing work.
Webber's mark was still there with only a few minutes to go, but ultimately he dropped down to fourth as Lewis Hamilton went quickest, followed to the top by Nico Rosberg and finally Heikki Kovalainen in the dying moments of the session.
Kazuki Nakajima finished a positive session for Williams in fifth spot, with Jarno Trulli sixth and the Ferrari pairing of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa seventh and eighth.
• Will McLaren and Williams continue their strong form from the morning session?
• Can Jaime Alguersuari back up his very good early runs this afternoon?
• ...and what of Red Bull and Brawn? No doubt they have been running race-stint fuel levels this morning, but on the other hand Vettel was unhappy with his tyres in first practice and Jenson Button's problems of the last month with tyres are well documented. What do you think is the primary factor for their midfield times, fuel load or tyres?
Tell the world what you think.
Click the SHOW LIVE FORUM link in the red bar at the bottom of your browser window if you'd like to join the debate.
There is a slight breeze from the west, but the maximum temperature is high today at 32 degrees Celsius.
The heatwave across this part of the world is about to end, however. Later today we will look ahead in detail at the weather prospects for Saturday and Sunday on the Hungarian Grand Prix weather page.
• Debutant Jaime Alguersuari helped Toro Rosso complete 79 laps - the most of any outfit this morning - as team and driver got used to one another and a radically-revised STR4. The car now features the developments that propelled forward sister team Red Bull Racing at the British Grand Prix.
• At the other end of the laps completed count was Force India - the team that surely will be worried the most about the improvements at Toro Rosso.
• Lucas di Grassi set the fastest time in practice for this weekend’s GP2 Series round with a best time of 1m28.261s - four seconds off the slowest Formula 1 pace.
• Since last year, a few cosmetic changes have occurred around the circuit. Additional conveyor belts have been added for safety reasons at Turns 5, 8 and 9, and a new debris fence has been added to the retaining wall exiting Turn 14.
The standard form in this session is that the drivers have no need for an installation lap, and they will be setting times quite quickly.
The harder of the two tyres remains the choice of the field at this stage.
Meantime, Button's front-end issues are all-too-evident on the timing monitor. Personal best first and second sectors are followed up once again by a slight loss of time in the final few corners of the lap, as he battles to get some front-end bite in those final, long corners.
Buemi pitted at the end of that lap.
Up front, Heikki Kovalainen is at the head of the list with Button second, Weber third and Raikkonen fourth.
for the last 15 minutes we have seen several drivers post improving sector times in the first and second sectors of the lap, only to lose momentum in the final few corners.
Timo Glock is third and Jenson Button is fourth, with Robert Kubica fifth and Kimi Raikkonen sixth.
As we move into the final 20 minutes of the session, a few more drivers will try out the softer tyre option, and may even take out some fuel.
Williams look like the first team to up the ante as we see both Nakajima and Rosberg on the super-soft tyres.
His race engineer Andrew Shovelin reminds him that he can change the sngle of the adjustable front wing should he want to. Jenson responds by stating that adding any more front flap is making the rear twitchy.
Jenson just can;t find the sweet spot at the moment.
That is a good recovery from Trulli, moving from 20th to sixth with 1m22.663s.
He soon runs out of road and drifts wide onto the asphalt run-off area on the outside of the corner, before continuing on. He has stayed out on track, but has slipped to 16th as Adrian Sutil improves to 13th in the Force India.
Meantime the other 19 drivers are out there and pushing hard to improve their time.
Nico Rosberg was third for Williams. He was also less than one-tenth of a second behind the leading pace, with Mark Webber ending the day fourth despite losing a lot of track time in the second half of the session.
Kazuki Nakajima was fifth in the second Williams and championship challenger Sebastian Vettel was sixth fastest.
Brawn fans will scratching their heads tonight as Jenson Button struggled to find front-end grip on a hot day when we all thought his tyre woes would disappear. More worrying for the Briton is that the temperature is expected to cool significantly for Saturday and Sunday.
It is nail-biting time for the Brawn fans and, with McLaren looking likely to upset the apple-cart, the rich pickings in terms of points might not be on for this weekend - again.
This situation sets us up perfectly for the second day of track action. Can Brawn recover and assert themselves or are they set to be swamped by the competition? Qualifying will go some way to answering that conundrum, but first there is the Saturday morning practice. Our coverage here on AUTOSPORT Live will begin at 08:45 GMT. We hope you can join us for that.