[3] Red Bull driver Mark Webber claimed his fourth victory of the season, and reclaimed the championship lead after Lewis Hamilton's retirement from the race.

[6] Red Bull continued their on-track dominance in the first session, with both Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber setting lap times over a second faster than their nearest challenger, the Renault of Robert Kubica.

After Ferrari's dominant display in Germany, the Italian team was noticeably off the pace in Budapest, with Fernando Alonso placing seventh and Massa finishing ninth at the end of the first session.

The circuit's notoriously dusty surface triggered several spins with the most notable being Vitaly Petrov who lost control in the final bend and found himself splayed across the entrance to the front straight, though he was able to return to the pits.

Heikki Kovalainen was forced to sit out the bulk of the ninety minutes with hydraulics problems – a recurrent theme for all of the new teams – while Alonso tore a chunk out of one of the kerbs late in the session.

Red Bull were once again the early pace-setters, with pundits and commentators expecting the fight for pole to be between Vettel and Webber and possibly Alonso, the only driver who had been in touch with them all weekend.

Although the gap between Red Bull and everyone else remained constant at a second, it was a hard-fought battle for the minor placings as several drivers struggled to promote themselves to the final qualifying period.

Where Hülkenberg and Rosberg slipped through, Button could only manage eleventh and his former teammate Barrichello twelfth, with the reigning World Champion missing the cut by just two thousandths of a second.

Adrian Sutil was able to take thirteenth alongside countryman Michael Schumacher, with Buemi, an anonymous Vitantonio Liuzzi and Alguersuari filling up the lower midfield places.

Elsewhere, Lewis Hamilton took advantage of Jenson Button's early Q2 exit to qualify fifth behind Felipe Massa, the 2008 World Champion looking to secure a good result and put as much space between himself and his teammate as possible in the championship standings.

Nico Rosberg endured the hour-long session despite coming dangerously close to elimination on two occasions to line up alongside Hamilton in sixth, whilst Vitaly Petrov became the twelfth and final man to out-qualify his teammate in 2010.

Several drivers predicted that "up to seventy percent" of the final race result would be settled in the first corner, owing to the tight and twisty nature of the Hungaroring circuit.

The other big movers were Vitaly Petrov, who passed Lewis Hamilton for fifth at the first corner - though he conceded the place to the 2008 World Champion the next lap when he found he could not get heat into his tyres - and Kamui Kobayashi, who surged from 23rd on the grid to 16th.

But a disruption occurred on lap fifteen when Vitantonio Liuzzi made contact with an unidentified driver and lost his front wing at turn eleven.

Like the controversial penalty given to Lewis Hamilton in Valencia, the rule - designed to stop teams from manipulating the field for strategy purposes under safety car conditions - has rarely been broken in the modern era of the sport, and Vettel was visibly angry about being penalised for it, feeling that it had cost him certain victory.

At the front of the field, Webber introduced a very simple strategy of driving as fast as he could for as long as he could, intending to dial out enough of a lead over Alonso so that he could pit without risking his position.

Williams had been attempting a similar strategy to BMW Sauber with Kamui Kobayashi in Valencia by having Barrichello pit late and charge back up through the field on super-soft tyres.

Petrov and Nico Hülkenberg took their career-best finishes to date with fifth and sixth places respectively, whilst Pedro de la Rosa and Kobayashi in the BMW Saubers were split by a recovering Jenson Button, all a lap down.