Antonio Giovinazzi set the fastest recorded lap of the Hungaroring as he headed the first day of testing for Ferrari by two-and-a-half seconds.

His lap of 1’15.648 was over half a second faster than the best time set during last weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix. It was set on hyper-soft tyres, which was not part of the allocation for the race weekend.

The session was red-flagged when Sean Gelael, who was conducting tyre testing for Pirelli, crashed his Toro Rosso. Rain fell during the afternoon which prevented several teams from conducting performance runs. Some, however, took advantage of the opportunity to run on a wet track.

Mercedes suffered a rare setback in testing as a technical problem confined Formula Two championship leader George Russell to the pit for a significant part of the test.

Force India and Williams both ran development versions of front wings built to new regulations which are being introduced for the 2019 F1 season. Red Bull also spent part of the test concentrating on 2019 development items, and like all the teams had access to Pirelli’s development tyres for next season.

Haas is not participating in this week’s test, which concludes tomorrow.

This article will be updated.

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2018 F1 season