F1 Hungarian Grand Prix 2026 Practice Round-Up: Ferrari Sweep Friday as Aston Martin’s New Package Suffers Suspension Failure

Representative laps only, in-laps, out-laps and any lap affected by the red flag excluded. Official stint and lap-time data.

Aston Martin’s 16-Part Upgrade and the Suspension Failure That Cut Its Running Short

Aston Martin brought 16 declared updates to Budapest, grouped in three areas. Front-end airflow: a reshaped front wing, endplate and a longer, thinner nose, developed as one package, plus revised front brake duct externals to work alongside it. Floor and bodywork: the full floor body, leading edge vanes, floor edge and diffuser all reworked together to add load, along with revised sidepod inlet, engine cover and new cooling louvres. Rear suspension and wing package: revised rear suspension and rear corner developed together, and the rear wing itself rebuilt, chord redistributed across the three elements, winglets added to the flap trailing edge, the beam wing and rear wing endplate both completely redesigned.

Stroll’s left-rear suspension failed exiting Turn 2 after eleven laps, pitching him into a spin before he came to rest on the exit of Turn 3, the car recovered on a low loader. That’s a suspension failure on the upgraded car, not proof the aerodynamic package itself caused it, and the team couldn’t repair the damage in time for FP2.

Alonso ran the same specification alone in FP2 and finished 19th of the 21 who set a time, a 1:21.719 that was 2.990s off Hamilton’s benchmark and just 0.073s clear of Perez’s Cadillac. That’s a poor result on the stopwatch, but Alonso running alone, a compromised programme and unknown fuel loads mean Friday doesn’t give a full read on what the package is actually worth. It’s a result, not yet a verdict.

The Rest of the Grid’s Updates

McLaren brought the first half of a two-part package that continues at Zandvoort. Rear wing endplate revision, a new floor and board, revised front corner furniture for airflow around the front tyre and brake cooling, and a revised rear corner for aerodynamic load. Separate from that declared package, Fornaroli ran FP1 testing the developed experimental rear wing carried over from Austria, an FP1-only item this weekend rather than a race-spec update.

Mercedes added a central rear wing winglet and a tail winglet merged into the rear wing brace, both for downforce and drag suited to Budapest’s low-speed, high-downforce layout, plus a wider engine cover exit for cooling.

Red Bull revised the camber and chord of the rear wing flaps and the rear wing pylon profile for more load and stability, alongside an expanded diffuser.

Ferrari added trailing edge devices to the rear wing, reshaped the endplate, and introduced an optional winglet cascade for extra downforce where needed.

Williams introduced a new rear wing flap geometry and modified floor winglets near the rear corner. Racing Bulls added roll hoop winglets alongside rear wing flap and geometry changes. Haas revised its straight-mode fairing and added a more aggressive Gurney flap to the rear wing. Audi revised its rear wing endplate. Cadillac enlarged its front brake cooling ducts.

Alpine declared nothing for this event.

Chasing Ferrari: McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes

Red Bull had the pace edge over the rest in FP1. Verstappen was second, 0.484s off Leclerc, before slipping to fourth in FP2, 0.692s off Hamilton and behind Norris, despite pitching in on the radio about the downshifts and the car feeling held back. Hadjar backed him up, fourth in FP1 and sixth in FP2, although his four-lap FP2 long run was too short to carry the same weight as Verstappen’s. Red Bull were the team nearest Ferrari’s pace in FP1. In FP2, that title belonged to McLaren.

Norris had a strong second half of the day. He was down in 11th in FP1, but FP2 was a different story, quickest of the session on softs with his 1:19.228 before the Ferraris found more in qualifying trim, and the joint-biggest representative long-run sample of the day, 11 laps at 1:24.843, matching Verstappen’s 11-lap FP1 run. That average came on the freshest tyre of the group it’s compared against, so it flatters him slightly on pure pace, but the volume of clean running itself says McLaren’s Friday was a solid one, upgrade included. McLaren finished FP2 as the second-fastest team, behind only Ferrari.

Mercedes were the model of consistency without threatening the front. Russell finished fifth in both sessions, on it from the first lap of FP1 through to the closing laps of FP2. Antonelli sat out FP1 for Vesti, came back 13th in FP2, and was mid-lap on a response to Norris’s benchmark when the red flag came out for Colapinto’s crash, an interruption that cost him the chance to properly answer it. A quietly competent Friday, well behind the group ahead of them but with no problems of their own to report.

Coffee Corner Take

Leclerc fastest in FP1, Hamilton fastest in FP2, both laps built the same way, quickest across every sector among the top ten, not a lap won at one end of the circuit. Two different drivers, two different sessions, the same shape of dominance. It was the strongest start to the weekend on pace, even if Leclerc’s FP1 stoppage leaves Ferrari with one reliability question to answer overnight.

Aston Martin leave Friday with almost no clean answer on whether the package works. Stroll’s suspension failure removed one car after eleven laps, while Alonso finished 19th in FP2 and only 0.073s ahead of Perez. Fuel loads and run plans prevent that gap becoming a final verdict on the upgrade, but nothing in Friday’s running gave them the immediate step they needed either.

The long runs point at a genuine group rather than one standout. Verstappen, Hadjar and Hulkenberg were within two tenths of each other on comparable tyre ages in FP1. Hamilton, Piastri and Verstappen sat in a similarly tight band in FP2, allowing for Norris’s fresher-tyre average sitting just above them. Nothing here says race pace is settled. It says there’s a cluster of cars close enough that Saturday’s track evolution and final sector work will do the separating.

Red Bull had the edge in FP1, McLaren took over as the closest challenger in FP2, Verstappen’s radio complaints aside. McLaren and Mercedes had the sort of Friday that won’t make a headline anywhere else, and that’s fine. Norris’s volume of clean running in FP2 matters more than the single lap time, and Russell being fifth twice over is exactly what a team building toward Saturday wants from a practice day. None of the three had to fight a stopwatch mismatch or a broken car, and quietly getting the work done counts for something on a weekend where Ferrari and Aston Martin took the headlines.