Lewis Hamilton makes ideal start in bid to equal Michael Schumacher record

Hungarian Grand Prix

Hamilton makes ideal start in bid to equal Schumacher record

Six-time F1 champion edged out Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas

Ian Parkes

Friday 17 July 2020 12:35 Updated: 12:44

Lewis Hamilton edged Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas in the opening practice session ahead of Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix.

After the opening two weekends of the new season in Austria, Formula 1 completes its first triple-header of the campaign at the Hungaroring this weekend, with Bottas holding a six-point lead over Hamilton in the drivers' standings.

The six-time F1 champion goes into the race with another Michael Schumacher record in his sights as he aims to equal the German's mark of most wins at a circuit. Hamilton has won on seven occasions in Hungary; Schumacher won the French GP eight times.

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The 35-year-old could not have asked for a better start, and set down an ominous marker for the rest of the weekend.

With rain forecast for Friday afternoon for the second session, and again on Saturday, many teams opted to bank soft-tyre running early on, as opposed to later in the opening 90-minute session.

At that stage, Bottas held a slender gap to Hamilton, whose Mercedes team then strapped on a set of hard tyres on to the Briton's W11.

It led to Hamilton posting the fastest lap of the session of one minute 16.003secs, finishing just 0.086s ahead of the Finn, whose quickest lap was on the medium compound.

Behind the Mercedes pair were Mercedes-powered duo Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll in their Racing Points, that is currently the subject of a protest from Renault, with both on soft tyres.

Perez was still half-a-second down on Hamilton, with Stroll a further four-tenths back, and the only other driver to finish within a second of the 35-year-old.

Renault's Daniel Ricciardo was effectively the best of the rest behind the Mercedes-powered quartet, with the Australian almost 1.2s down, followed by Ferrari pair Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc, with all on the medium compound.

The Scuderia failed to gain an accurate read on the upgrades it added to the SF1000 for last weekend's Styrian GP, due to rain on Saturday and the crash between Vettel and Leclerc on lap one at the Red Bull Ring.

Vettel has stated the package is not a game-changer, but there is a degree of hope of improvement at least.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen was almost 1.5s adrift as he set the eighth quickest time on soft tyres, with another soft-tyre runner in McLaren's Lando Norris and Esteban Ocon in his Renault rounding out the top 10, with the Frenchman 1.612s behind Hamilton on mediums.

McLaren's Carlos Sainz led the second half of the field, with AlphaTauri's Pierre Galsy at the rear, albeit with the Frenchman failing to set a time due to an issue with his Honda power unit that confined him to the garage for the entire session.

Robert Kubica enjoyed another practice outing for Alfa Romeo -replacing Kimi Raikkonen - but with the Pole the slowest of those who set a time, finishing just over three seconds down with a lap of 1:19.150s, and six-tenths of a second behind 18th quickest George Russell in his Williams, albeit with the Briton on hard tyres.

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