F1-UPDATE: Merced will not be happy with Flying McLaren and a revitalized Red Bull because of….

When Lewis Hamilton took the chequered flag first last time out at Silverstone, he managed to set yet another all-time record in his extremely decorated F1 career with an unprecedented ninth grand prix victory at the same circuit.

But despite waiting almost three years to record his 104th grand prix victory, he now has the opportunity to equal his own recently-set record at another circuit where he has practically owned the top step of the podium – the Hungaroring.

With nine pole positions, eight wins and 11 podium finishes from his 17 starts in Hungary – including last year’s pole position here in 2023 – there is perhaps no better track for Hamilton to try and build on his Silverstone success and Mercedes’ two-race win streak than the twisty 4.38km course. After all, even the W15’s two tempestuous predecessors fared better at the low-speed circuit than most venues on the calendar.

But if Mercedes and Hamilton were hoping to charge into Budapest with their heads held high and be in the fight for a hat trick of wins, the team may have come away from Friday less energised than they’d have hoped. And not just because of all the extra work they had to do fixing the CrowdStrike problems on all their paddock tech.

At the end of the day, Hamilton was only seventh-fastest, just under a tenth of a second slower than team mate George Russell and half a second adrift of Lando Norris’s best time of the day for McLaren.

“We’ve not really been on form today,” Hamilton admitted after practice. “The car hasn’t felt good, set-up wise, but I think we have an idea why and we’ll just work overnight – but not the best prep so far.”

On his fastest lap in the second session, Hamilton was fairly evenly-matched with both Norris and Max Verstappen over the first half of the lap – thanks in part to the superior top speed he reached at the end of the straight. But once it came to the twisty section of the circuit after the chicane, Hamilton lost time from the sweepers all the way until reaching the chequered flag.

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Hamilton suggested that a setting the team had adjusted on his car ahead of the weekend may not have had the desired effect on lap time, but that it could be easily reverted.

“There’s a particular thing that we changed into this weekend that we probably need to go back on,” he explained. “But it’s all relatively close, otherwise. I think we couldn’t do the pace the other guys did today, but the long run pace was pretty decent at the end.”

Hamilton was unique among his rivals at the front of the field in that he was the only of the Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren or Ferrari drivers to run his high-fuel runs in second practice with the soft tyre. Russell, the Red Bull pair and Carlos Sainz Jnr all chose the mediums for their runs, while the McLarens of Norris and Oscar Piastri both ran the hard tyres.

It was a very hot start to the weekend in Hungary, with track temperatures touching 60C in the opening hour of practice. Pirelli noted that it was the third-hottest day on track action they had experienced since becoming the sport’s tyre supplier back in 2011.

While the circuit cooled down dramatically for the evening’s second practice session, conditions were still not fully representative of what teams can expect for the grand prix. None of the three practice sessions over Friday and Saturday are scheduled for the same 3pm time slot as the start of the race. As such, teams varied their tyre strategies. McLaren opted for a gentler approach, while Red Bull looked more keen to test how quickly Perez’s mediums would fade when pressed.

Although direct comparisons are tricky, given the different compounds, there are signs that Red Bull and McLaren will again be locked in a close battle for supremacy this weekend. Red Bull have only been able to bring one full raft of upgrades to the Hungaroring this weekend, with, unsurprisingly, Verstappen getting the full benefit of them. But despite missing out on having the optimum Red Bull package, in theory, Sergio Perez was far happier at the end of Friday than he so often has been in recent months, saying that this was “the most comfortable I have felt with the car at this stage of the weekend in a while.”

Norris was quickest over a single lap, but even his long run on the hard tyres looked promising, matching or being even faster than Verstappen’s runs on the mediums, which were slightly slower but more consistent. Unfortunately for Ferrari fans, Charles Leclerc missed out on any opportunity to get a long run in after crashing out of the session early. However, even Sainz’s high-fuel runs would have done little to help his team feel like they are any closer to fighting for more wins this weekend.