Norris leads McLaren 1-2 in FP3

Lando Norris led a McLaren 1-2 in the final Hungarian Grand Prix practice session as Oscar Piastri fell just half a tenth away from his Formula 1 team-mate.

Norris put together an impressive lap to wrest top spot from George Russell by almost 0.5 seconds, amid a second set of soft-tyre runs in preparation for qualifying. The Briton’s lap subsequently withstood efforts from Piastri and Max Verstappen to lead the session, putting McLaren in a good place for the afternoon’s session.

A slow start to the session effectively gave the Red Bull duo clear track to play with as they circulated on the hard tyre, and thus Sergio Perez opened with a 1m19.159s.

Verstappen posted a 1m18.897s to then go quickest and followed that up with a half-second improvement, as Perez also found a time just over 0.4s shy of his team-mate. The gap re-opened when Max Verstappen set a 1m17.938s, helped by a front-wing flap adjustment to cure a modicum of understeer.

Red Bull’s freedom of the Hungaroring circuit ended after 15 minutes had elapsed, prompting many of the other runners to attempt a series of faster laps on the softer grades of tyre; Norris then set the new benchmark having put together a 1m16.931s on the softs.

George Russell then found a 1m16.826s on a second run with a set of soft tyres as the Mercedes arguably looked more settled in cooler conditions, the track being 20C cooler than it was in FP1 on Friday. Norris, in the meantime, also reused his initial set of softs but could not find time on his second run.

This preceded a second round of soft-tyre runs in the final 20 minutes, and Russell found almost three-tenths on his previous lap to extend his advantage; Lewis Hamilton joined him in the top two, 0.2s shy of his younger team-mate.

Norris then reclaimed top spot with a 1m16.098s, putting almost half a second on Russell on a lap with new softs, and was followed by Oscar Piastri going just 0.044s shy on his own tour of the circuit.

This could not be matched by Verstappen’s first effort on softs, and the Dutchman lost a quarter of a second relative to Norris in the middle sector to move up to third. In attempting a final lap at the end of the session on the same softs, Verstappen locked up at the first corner to cement the practice order.

Russell’s effort was good enough for fourth, while Carlos Sainz led the line for Ferrari to claim the fifth-fastest lap,…