Qualifying
Qualifying at the tight, twisty, slippery and rarely used Hungaroring threw up a few surprises at this, the one venue on the calendar that it was generally felt gave the atmo their best chance of victory against the turbos. All drivers bettered their Friday time in Saturdays qualifying session which saw McLaren's Ayrton Senna grab his 8th pole position of the season and 24th of his career which at the time made him third on the all-time list after Jim Clark and Juan Manuel Fangio. There were five cars between Senna and World Championship leader, team mate Alain Prost and all were 'atmos' headed by Nigel Mansell in his Williams-Judd. In Hungary Mansell was in fact recovering from Chicken pox, something he picked up from a junior Mansell.
Following the McLaren and Williams on the grid were Thierry Boutsen (Benetton-Ford), Ivan Capelli (March-Judd), Alessandro Nannini (Benetton) and Riccardo Patrese (Williams) before Prost in the 2nd Mclaren. World Champion Nelson Piquet was 13th in the Lotus while the Ferrari's of Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto were in 9th and 15th respectively, suffering from no grip, poor handling and bad throttle response from the Ferrari V6.
Read more about this topic: 1988 Hungarian Grand Prix