Vettel and Red Bull dominate practice

Sebastian Vettel strengthened his hand ahead of tomorrows Hungarian Grand Prix by posting the fastest time in both of yesterday’s practice sessions as Red Bull dominated.

On both occasions Vettel spearheaded a Red Bull one-two, finishing a quarter of a second faster than team-mate Mark Webber in the opening session at the Hungaroring.

Come the second session, and the switch to the soft Pirelli tyre — the quicker of the two compounds being used this weekend — Vettel improved his time by 1.5secs with a lap of one minute 21.264secs.

Webber at least managed to close the gap to just 0.044secs come the conclusion, but Vettel is so far looking on course to increase his current championship lead heading into Formula One’s summer break.

As in FP1, a Lotus was third on the timesheet in FP2, but it was that of Romain Grosjean and not one of Vettel’s two main title rivals in Kimi Raikkonen, who was eighth and 0.747secs off the pace.

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, 34 points adrift of Vettel after nine of the 19 races, was again fourth fastest in his Ferrari, 0.162secs down, with team-mate Felipe Massa in fifth.

Meanwhile, Jenson Button is convinced a post-summer break victory is on the cards. for McLaren.

For Button, the focus is on the Belgian Grand Prix at the end of next month after tomorrow’s race in Hungary and Formula One’s traditional summer holiday that includes a mandatory two-week factory shutdown.

Button has no doubts something is about to click after the race at the Hungaroring where he has won twice before.

“We still want to win a race, and I think we still can win a race, so it is not going to be a completely bad year,” said Button.