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The changeable nature of the weather at the Hungaroring resulted in a somewhat muted second practice session for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

Used to extreme heat, the relatively cool conditions seemed to take everyone by surprise and, aided by a much higher wind speed than this morning, times were slower than had been expected.

Felipe Massa, on a low fuel run early on for Ferrari, set a time of 1:21.778, and from then on nobody even looked like trying to match it. Indeed second place, that of Fernando Alonso, was a full second and more down (1;23.097), the World Champion heading team mate Giancarlo Fisichella (1:23.189) in a Renault 2-3.

Upholding the honour of the ‘Friday’ boys was Robert Doornbos, the Red Bull driver placing in fourth ahead of Anthony Davidson (Honda) and the Toyotas of Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli.

Michael Schumacher took eighth place, after concentrating on longer runs, with the two BMW-Saubers of Nick Heidfeld and race debutante Robert Kubica just behind him. Notably, second to tenth places were covered by only a second.

Likewise 11th to 21st, in which a gaggle of the usual midfielders are joined by a couple of odd names.

Pedro de la Rosa set 11th fastest time in a session where Mclaren kept running to a minimum (Kimi Raikkonen back in 25th!) ahead of the MF1 of Marcus Winkelhock and the Honda twins Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button.

Tiago Monteiro put his MF1 in 15th place, and Alex Wurz slots into sixteenth after his fastest lap, considerably quicker than this one, was compromised by last minute yellow flags held out for the other MF1 of Christijan Albers (the Dutchman setting 20th best time.)

Drive of the day for many will be the appearance of Takuma Sato, in the Super Aguri, in 17th position. Yes, it’s only a practice session and yes, the times were not representative of what we should see tomorrow, but when one considers that his time of 1:24.623 is less than three seconds off Massa’s fastest time, and that he has ably mixed it with the Williams, the Red Bulls, Toro Rossos and Midlands, it has to be hailed as a fine achievement by the little Japanese outfit. Sakon Yamamoto, for the record, had a troubled time and posted slowest of all.

Nico Rosberg and Mark Webber posted 18th and 22nd for Williams after little running, and Neel Jani, Scott Speed and Tonio Liuzzi held 19th, 21st and 26th respectively for Toro Rosso. The ‘sister’ Red Bull’s of Christian Klien and David Coulthard took 23rd and 24th.

A strange session, then, surely not representative of things to come, leaves little known as to how things will pan out tomorrow.

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Written: Fri, 04 Aug 2006 13:29:00