Hungarian GP, Practice Two: Charles Leclerc edges Lando Norris in confusing session as Red Bull outside top 10

Charles Leclerc beat Lando Norris by 0.015 s to top practice two; A lot of mystery will remain on Saturday as the teams use different run plans; Watch Hungarian GP live on Sky Sports F1, P3, Saturday at 11.30am; F1 Juniors live on Sky Showcase and Sky Sports Mix on Sunday

Charles Leclerc overtook Lando Norris in the fastest time in a confused practice two at the Hungarian GP that saw Red Bull and Mercedes have no cars in the top 10.

Leclerc posted a best time of 1:17.686 on the soft tires in a Ferrari to edge out Norris by 0.015 s as McLaren’s MCL60 continued to show good pace following its recent upgrade.

Pierre Gasly was third for Alpine, 0.232 seconds off Leclerc’s benchmark, but championship leader Max Verstappen was 11th while Sergio Pérez was 18th and the two Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were 16th and 20th respectively.

With Formula 1 testing alternate tire allocation qualifying this weekend – meaning each driver has two fewer sets of dry tyres – the teams ran different run plans in their usual practice two format of an initial set-up run, then a qualifying simulation followed by a long race simulation.

This resulted in a top 10 upset and considerable mystery going into Saturday and the qualifying session as to where the hard tires should be used in Q1, the medium tires in Q2 and the soft tires in Q3.

Yuki Tsunoda was fourth in AlphaTauri and Gasly’s teammate Esteban Ocon rounded out the top five.

Ricciardo optimistic after first AlphaTauri drive

In his first dry running of AlphaTauri, Daniel Ricciardo was four tenths slower than new teammate Tsunoda and finished 14th on the final timesheet.

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Daniel Ricciardo felt ‘quite optimistic’ and ‘as if he never really left’ after his first drive at Alpha Tauri after replacing Nick de Vries.

The Australian, who replaced Nick de Vries at the team, said of his first day in F1: “The positions are probably not very relevant at the moment. I think today it was more appropriate for me to basically get a feel for where I am with the car, and it all felt very familiar.

“I think there’s obviously a lot of outside attention, but once I put on the helmet and got in the car, it all felt like – in a way – I never really left.

“I think the car looks fine, so not feeling too bad. A little work tonight, but not feeling too weird.

“Definitely, a bit more of me, and of course there are things that I feel already in the car that we can try to work on.

“So right now, I’m quite optimistic, it looks like Yuki’s had a pretty good day too, so I think if we put all these things together, maybe tomorrow we can be okay.”

Red Bull and Mercedes find themselves backwards

Ricciardo finished four places ahead of Pérez on the final timesheet as the Mexican suffered another difficult session after crashing on his opening lap in practice one.

During the long working hours he had a major lock-up on his soft tyres, which left him unable to re-use the set for the low fueled effort.

He also completed the fewest laps in the session and posted only 13 on the board.

Meanwhile Verstappen was 11th in the other Red Bull, almost six tenths off the time of Leclerc, who had set his fastest lap on the used set of soft tyres.

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Martin Brundle gives us a trackside view of how the cars are doing at Turn 4 of the Hungaroring

And as Mercedes focused on longer runs and ran only medium tyres, Hamilton and Russell also found themselves towards the rear of the field.

Hamilton said after the session, “We only had one tire that we were going to use this session. So yeah, for this weekend they haven’t really made a great format change, it means we have to run less.”

,[The car] Didn’t feel good at all. It felt like the car was at it’s worst today but we will work on the setup tonight and hopefully tomorrow… Last year it felt really bad in the beginning and then [Mercedes finished P2 and P3],

Russell said: “We were obviously on a very different schedule to everyone else, we only used one set of tyres, it was also the same set of tires used from FP1, so the lap times don’t really give a true representation. I’m sure tomorrow will be better.”

Back in the top 10, Nico Hulkenberg was sixth for Haas, slightly ahead of the Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas. Bottas and teammate Zhou Guanyu, who finished ninth, set their best times on the medium tyres.

Fernando Alonso split the two Alfa Romeos in eighth, while Carlos Sainz rounded out the top 10 with only a quarter of a second covering P3-P10.