Nicholas Latifi set a towering benchmark for Williams in a soaked FP3 session in Hungary, leaving Charles Leclerc second by 0.661s – and the other Williams of Alex Albon third by 0.901s to his team mate.
Intermediate runs late in FP3 shook the order up, and Latifi’s stunning lap of 1m 41.480s put him over six-tenths ahead of Leclerc – who spun on inters late on – for the Canadian to lead a Formula 1 session for the first time in his career. Albon finished third, leaving Max Verstappen fourth, over eight-tenths behind the Thai driver.
George Russell finished fifth for Mercedes, both of the Silver Arrows finding tyre warm-up particularly difficult in the soaked conditions. Torrential downpours welcomed the drivers at the start of the session, but subsided for the racers to put in intermediate laps at the very end.
Fernando Alonso was the first driver to don inters – pulling off an incredible save and to keep out of danger – and finished sixth ahead of Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz. Lando Norris finished eighth as the last of the top 10 to set their fastest lap on intermediates, while Sebastian Vettel finished ninth – having crashed at Turn 10 to bring out a red flag with 10 minutes remaining.