Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen dominated Friday’s second practice session in Hungary this afternoon, until Nelson Piquet in the Renault split their McLarens right at the end. Running with both new and old nose designs, Hamilton set the pace all the way through, ending with a lap of 1m 20.554s with the MP4-23 in standard configuration.
Piquet pushed his R28 to a lap of 1m 20.748s, and then immediately spun in Turn One, while Kovalainen’s best was 1m 20.760s. Fernando Alonso was the only other man in the 1m 20s, with 1m 20.928s in the second Renault.
Although only fourth-quickest in the morning session behind title rivals Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen as well as McLaren team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, Hamilton set the record straight in the afternoon.
That was 0.194secs quicker than Nelson Piquet in his Renault, with the Brazilian and Hamilton second and first respectively as in the race at Hockenheim 12 days ago.
Piquet’s lap, though, was a qualifying one on low fuel at the end of the 90-minute afternoon run, undoing his fine work with a spin on his very next lap.
Kovalainen was third overall, 0.206secs adrift of Hamilton, with double world champion Fernando Alonso fourth in his Renault.
With just a thousandth of a second between the two, Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa both tried the softer tyre at the end of the session, but remained fifth and sixth fastest. After topping the timesheets this morning, neither driver was able to improve on that time this afternoon.
Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica were next up for the BMW Sauber team - Heidfeld almost six-tenths off Hamilton’s best time and Kubica eight-tenths. The Toyota duo of Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock seem to have a nice balance on their TF108s as they posted the ninth and 11th best times.
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