After an abysmal recent run stretching back to June’s Canadian GP, Ferrari has brought a modified floor to Budapest with the aim of alleviating bouncing problems at high speed and low ride heights.

The lower-speed nature of the Hungaroring, compared to Silverstone and Barcelona – where bouncing has been most problematic and forced Ferrari into reverting on aerodynamic upgrades – will no doubt be helping.

Sainz’s 1m18.713s best lap of the session, set on the soft C5 compound Pirelli, seemed to achieve the right balance between speed-sapping understeer at the start of the lap utilised to protect the rear tyres from overheating too much through the looping final sector.

With ambient temperatures climbing towards 32C and a track temperature of 60C, the tyres are under extreme stress and therefore will favour an understeer balance (and driving style) that protects those rears as far as possible.

This compromise probably suits Sainz a little better than Charles Leclerc, who was two tenths slower and third overall in FP1.

Max Verstappen’s Red Bull was running in heavily modified specification, fitted with a more traditional style of engine cover/cooling arrangement, shorn of the high ‘cannon’ shoulders utilised on the RB20 originally.

The aim is to give better aero efficiency at low speed, presumably at a cost to high-speed performance. Sergio Perez ran his car in Silverstone-spec bodywork, which will give the team back-to-back comparative data.

Verstappen was 0.276s down on Sainz in FP1, but the impressive thing is that Verstappen set that time on a set of soft tyres he’d already completed four flying laps on earlier in the session.

So although the track was in similar condition for the best runs of both the Ferraris and the quickest Red Bull, the Ferraris undoubtedly had a tyre advantage thanks to running the hard compound for the first part of the session and setting their quickest times when those softs were at their best.

Perez ran with aero sensors on his car initially, then spent a long duration in the garage. He eventually chipped away at his lap times, finishing just under half a second adrift of Verstappen’s best – though each of their final flying laps on a similarly-aged set of softs converged a bit more.

Verstappen’s final flier was a 1m19.202s; Perez’s a 1m19.440s.