There were no major surprises during qualifying for the Hungarian race, with Lewis Hamilton taking a confident pole position, beating an uncomfortable Nico Rosberg by half a second. Manor, Sauber and McLaren were the early fallers, although Fernando Alonso did make it into Q2. He was unable to set a time after his car crawled to a halt out on track, and despite the Spaniard’s heroic efforts to push the McLaren back to the pitlane, he wouldn’t have been allowed to participate anyway.

Force India, Lotus and Toro Rosso propped up the second session, with Romain Grosjean and Max Verstappen outqualifying their respective teammates to make it into the top ten. The gap between first and tenth place, however, was over two seconds.