BUDAPEST — World champion Lando Norris topped the timing sheets for McLaren on Saturday, leading a highly competitive third and final free practice session ahead of Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix. On a dusty and intensely hot afternoon at the Hungaroring circuit—where track temperatures soared to 52 degrees Celsius—Norris clocked a blistering lap of 1 minute and 17.939 seconds. His time was just enough to edge out Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton by a mere 0.117 seconds. Drivers’ championship leader Kimi Antonelli secured the third-fastest spot for Mercedes, finishing just 0.129 seconds adrift. Notably, this marked the first time in the 2026 season that a Mercedes car failed to top the final practice session before qualifying, underscoring the razor-thin margins separating the front-runners this weekend.
The session was heavily impacted by intense summer heat and an early red flag, which was triggered 21 minutes into the hour when Sergio Perez’s Cadillac ground to a halt at turn two with its brakes ablaze from severe overheating. Once the track cleared, teams rushed out on fresh soft tyres for late-session qualifying simulations. Charles Leclerc claimed fourth in the second Ferrari, closely followed by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Mercedes’ George Russell. Meanwhile, Red Bull faced a challenging session, with four-time champion Max Verstappen and his teammate Isack Hadjar finishing seventh and eighth, respectively. Further down the grid, Aston Martin struggled with their newly introduced B-spec cars, leaving Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll languishing in 17th and 18th positions ahead of the crucial qualifying battle.
