BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Nico Rosberg set the fastest time during second practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix after Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton ended his session in the barriers.
The rear of Hamilton's Mercedes snapped out of shape as he approached Turn 11 on his fifth lap, sending the car into a long slide across the run-off area and into the barriers. The impact registered at 10.4G on the on-screen graphic and triggered an alarm in the cockpit that required the world champion to go for a precautionary check at the medical centre.
Despite the force of the impact, Hamilton was able to get his car running again and return to the pits at slow speed with no obvious damage to the bodywork. However, the car needed to be fully stripped and checked for damage meaning Hamilton's session ended with just four complete laps on the board.
During that brief spell on track he was still able to set the fifth fastest time of the session, albeit on the soft compound tyres rather than the super-softs used by Rosberg to set his best time. Hamilton missed out on the usual long-runs teams conduct on a Friday afternoon, but will be able to analyse Rosberg's 15-lap run on the super-softs and a 18-lap run on the softs.
Mercedes appear to be in another private battle for victory this weekend, with Daniel Ricciardo the closest competitor 0.595s off the pace. He also set his fastest lap on the super-softs and was 0.8s quicker than Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen, who made mistakes on both of his attempts at a quick lap.
Verstappen's errors allowed Sebastian Vettel to split the Red Bull's, but any hope of a repeat of last year's victory at the Hungaroring look slim with the Ferrari driver 0.913s off the pace of Rosberg's Mercedes. Kimi Raikkonen's best lap time underlined Ferrari's struggle as failed to beat Hamilton's early effort on softs despite using the faster super-soft tyre.
For the second session in a row, McLaren resumed its position as the best of the rest behind the top three teams. Once again, Fernando Alonso was the faster of the two drivers by 0.059, but more importantly for the team he was over a tenth clear of Nico Hulkenberg's Force India in ninth.
Esteban Gutierrez finished the session 0.020s outside the top ten, ahead of both Williams drivers and the Toro Rossos. Carlos Sainz's session ended in the Turn 1 run-off as he pulled over with a technical issue just a few laps after Felipe Nasr's session came to an end with a problem at Turn 2.
Romain Grosjean complained about his Haas' brakes early in the session, saying he was "fed up" with the persistent problems, and finished down in 15th, albeit just 0.191s behind teammate Gutierrez. Jolyon Palmer's problems in the Renault continued into a second session and he finished 19th with just 12 laps.