It was a mixed free practice day for Red Bull. Championship leader Max Verstappen lead the morning session, while in the afternoon both Mercedes signed better laps with Bottas topping the classification and Hamilton an extremely close second.

The Dutch driver wasn't satisfied with his feeling with the car during FP2, struggling with its balance, but didn't look particularly worried by the issues or the gap to the Silver Arrows.

After the afternoon outing Verstappen said to Sky Sports that Red Bull tried out some fixings in between the sessions, and that the track conditions didn't help as it was extremely hot at 64'C:

"Just a few adjustments we were trying from FP1 to FP2 so just need to look into which things worked and which things didn’t. You know the track was also very hot so it’s never easy like that but yeah, we’ll see."

The team will work on both quali and race pace in tomorrow's FP3: “[We need to improve] especially over one lap but also in the long run, so a lot of things to look into, but nothing shocking.”

The Dutchman wasn't too fazed by his teammate's rather underwhelming morning performance, P8 nine-tenths off his time in FP1:

“It’s nothing too big to overcome. It’s just in general not an easy day with track temperatures like this so we’ll analyse everything.” 

 

Day 1 ✅ Still some room for improvement. We will work hard to fine-tune the set-up of the car for tomorrow #KeepPushing 🇭🇺 #HungarianGP pic.twitter.com/lypK8XQfMZ

— Max Verstappen (@Max33Verstappen) July 30, 2021

Azerbaijan GP winner Sergio Perez wasn't happy with his performance either, with a big gap from session leader Verstappen in the morning but managed a top-five result in FP2.

The Mexican driver still doesn't feel at ease with the RB16B  after almost half a season, but that the situation is improving:

"I’m not fully comfortable with the car. We’ve made good steps from not expecting these kind of conditions, so just reading conditions better and getting a better lap."

Perez added that he believes he can do much better in the next days, considering that he had traffic issues too.

"Traffic was critical on my lap as well, so I think there’s plenty to play for tomorrow still. I’m looking forward to it. We've got a pretty good idea of which steps we have to take, so I’m optimistic for the rest of the weekend.

Up-and-running in Budapest 💪 How the Bulls fared in FP1 and FP2 #HungarianGP 🇭🇺

— Red Bull Racing Honda (@redbullracing) July 30, 2021