Red Bull's Vettel sets pace at Hungarian Grand Prix

BUDAPEST, Hungary -- Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel posted the best times during both 90-minute practice sessions for the Hungarian Grand Prix on Friday.

Vettel outpaced teammate Mark Webber in the morning session, then topped Ferrari's Fernando Alonso by 0.49 seconds in the afternoon.

Red Bull and Ferrari alternated the other top places in the afternoon, with Webber third ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa - back at the scene where he suffered near-fatal skull fractures in a qualifying crash last year.

"It was just normal to go back on the track," Massa said. "It was nice to be back after what happened last year, but I didn't think about it when I was in the car."

Alonso said Saturday's sessions - a third practice and qualifying - would show more clearly the teams' strengths and weaknesses than these initial laps around the Hungaroring's twisting and relatively slow design.

"It's only Friday," the Spaniard said in the Ferrari paddock. "All the teams have tried different things and we don't really know how much faster the others may be than us."

Alonso said Ferrari's main objective in Sunday's race was to finish ahead of McLaren, which leads the team and the drivers' championships.

"First of all we'll try to reduce the difference with McLaren and then see if in a few races we can cut the gap to less than 25 points, a one-race difference," Alonso said.

Among the teams, McLaren has 300 points, Red Bull is second with 272, and Ferrari third with 208.

Lewis Hamilton is the top driver with 157 points after 11 races. Teammate Jenson Button, the defending champion, is second with 143 points. Red Bull drivers Vettel and Webber each have 136 points and Alonso, the only other contender in triple digits, has 123.

In other afternoon placings, Renault's Vitaly Petrov of Russia beat Hamilton for fifth, while the other Renault of Robert Kubica was seventh. Button was ninth.