A day of extreme contrasts in Hungary meant that conditions ranged from track temperatures of 51 degrees in FP3 - just one degree less than the hottest session recorded so far this year (52 degrees in Baku) - to torrential rain just before the start of qualifying.

As a result, qualifying was delayed for 20 minutes, and then a number of red flags delayed the session further, which began on Cinturato Blue full wet tyres. By the time Q1 resumed for the final time, more than an hour after it had been scheduled to start, nearly all the drivers went out on Cinturato intermediate tyres, with track temperatures climbing again.

From Q2 onwards, all the drivers used the intermediate tyre, but with the track drying so rapidly they all moved to the supersoft by the end of the session, which ran without interruptions. All the drivers used just one set of supersoft in Q2, with the exception of Williams driver Valtteri Bottas, who used two. According to the rules, this is the compound that the top 10 will start with tomorrow (assuming it's a dry race).

Q3 was the only session to be run entirely on slick tyres, despite some patches of water remaining and very slippery kerbs, with Nico Rosberg's pole time of 1m19.965s solidly beating the pole time from last year for Mercedes.

If conditions do indeed remain dry tomorrow, as is expected, two stops is likely to form the optimal race strategy, irrespective of whether or not drivers start on the soft or the supersoft tyre.

Paul Hembery: "In a sport that's thrown up some crazy situations in the past, this was one of the most mixed-up days that we've witnessed - but the end result was still a Mercedes one-two. The teams certainly got to try a wide range of our tyres today, and the mixed conditions means that they have a good allocation of unused slicks to choose from tomorrow, which will probably be a two-stop race."

How the tyres behaved today

Medium: Used minimally in practice but not in qualifying, unlikely to be seen in the race.

Soft: Not seen at all in qualifying but will figure prominently in the race strategy.

Supersoft: The teams switched straight to this tyre once the track dried up.

Intermediate: Used from Q2 onwards, despite the standing water.

Full wet: With the circuit waterlogged during Q1, the automatic choice for this session.

Possible race strategies and maximum laps

Pirelli recommends that the following numbers of laps are not exceeded on each compound:

Soft = 29 laps

Supersoft = 14 laps

On this basis, the optimal pit-stop strategies predicted by Pirelli are as follows:

Quickest: Two-stopper: two stints on soft of 29 laps each + one 12-lap stint on supersoft