Hungaroring F3: Gunther dominates qualifying on drying track

With a big shower soaking the track before qualifying but no further rain arriving later on, the session was held on a damp but drying surface.

While Jake Hughes kicked off the session with a 1m55.285s, Gunther set a lap nearly five seconds quicker three minutes later.

The German continued to lower the benchmark for the rest of the session, improving several times and never giving up the lead.

His 1m49.369s was good enough to beat the rest of the field, with the exception of runner-up Joey Mawson, by more than eight tenths.

Mawson was 0.352s adrift, the Australian rookie being the only other driver to be below the 1m50s barrier.

However, Mawson will only start Race 1 fifth due to a three-place grid penalty for causing a collision in the previous round at Pau.

He falls behind Hughes of Hitech and Carlin's Jehan Daruvala, the duo setting identical laptimes, and Callum Ilott, and will start right ahead of VAR teammate Pedro Piquet.

Lando Norris had a low-key session, being as low as 13th until the very end, but eventually salvaging seventh.

Prema duo Guan Yu Zhou and Mick Schumacher were eighth and 10th respectively, sandwiching Harrison Newey.

Points leader Joel Eriksson was only 17th as the four Motopark drivers were confined to the last four places in the order.

David Beckmann, who switched from VAR to Motopark, was the fastest of them in 15th as Marino Sato, Eriksson and Keyvan Andres were 3.3s, 3.8s and 4.3s off the pace respectively.