Lewis Hamilton produced more evidence that McLaren are recovering from their abysmal start to the season by setting the fastest time in practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Benefitting from a raft of new parts rushed to the Hungaroring circuit near Budapest from McLaren's headquarters in Surrey, the defending world champion stopped the clock on 1min 22.079secs in the quicker afternoon session.

That was 0.047secs faster than team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, winner of last year's Hungarian race and the pace-setter this morning, with Nico Rosberg third in his Williams and Mark Webber, still bubbling from his maiden Grand Prix victory in Germany a fortnight ago, fourth for Red Bull.

Jenson Button, desperate to revive his title challenge after finishing behind the Red Bulls of Webber and Sebastian Vettel in the last two rounds, was back in 13th position.

But with just over a second covering the first 19 cars, Button will need only a small improvement tomorrow in order to go gunning for the pole position that is so crucial on a tight, twisting track where overtaking opportunities are at a premium.

Jaime Alguersuari made a safe, steady start to his F1 career although he finished last of the 20 drivers in the 10th round of the 17-race series.

However, that position was better than it sounds because the Spanish rookie, at 19 years and 126 days set to become the youngest driver to start a world championship race, was just 1.863secs slower than Hamilton. And in a total of 82 laps, the most posted during the morning and afternoon sessions at a technically difficult circuit, Alguersuari did not put a wheel wrong.

That confounded fears, expressed by Button and Ferrari's Felipe Massa, that he might be out of his depth after being drafted in by Toro Rosso to replace uncompetitive Sebastien Bourdais.

And Alguersuari, the British Formula Three title holder, received significant backing from countryman Fernando Alonso who, in 2005, became the youngest world champion at the age of 24 years and 58 days, a record subsequently broken by Hamilton.

Alonso, 12th fastest this afternoon in his Renault, insisted Alguersuari was right to grab the chance of joining the Formula One elite. He said: “When you have the opportunity to drive a Formula One car, how can you say no? It is not possible. It is a big opportunity, the opportunity of your life, and you need to take it.

“Also, the Fridays of the last two championships have effectively been test sessions. We have more or less free engines, four sets of tyres, so we can do a lot of laps on Fridays. Obviously he will not arrive 100 per cent for this race, but it is a great opportunity and hopefully in a very short time he will be 100 per cent.”

Alguersuari's presence in Hungary has also been defended by Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost, who hit out at critics of his young charge. Tost said: “We expect him to be fast. We expect him to be a very measured and highly-skilled driver.

When Dietrich Mateschitz (owner of Red Bull) decided to run a second team in Toro Rosso, one of the main targets was to give the young drivers, especially from the Red Bull young driver programme, the chance to come into Formula One.

“And when we decided to change from Bourdais a couple of weeks ago, we studied all the data of the young Red Bull drivers and Jaime was the most experienced, the most successful and the most measured driver.

“Therefore we decided to run him. I am convinced that he will come up with a good performance and that he will be successful.”